To the second question: the reason this story is worth retelling is because it's about every kind of love, most especially the transforming love that rises above adversity and perceived ugliness. Other special effects, and there are many, are equally well-managed. McKinley adds delightful touches of her own - for example, the Beast's library, in which Beauty can read books that haven't been written, by writers such as Browning and Kipling, who have yet to be born. She is an honest narrator, and we trust her. The Beast is made real and vulnerable as well as properly frightening, and because we see the magic through Beauty's eyes, we believe everything. We feel with Beauty, we share her love of her home, her (perfectly described) horse, Greatheart, and all the worlds that she inhabits: natural, supernatural and intellectual. It is hard for a first-person narrative to get into the heads of other characters, but McKinley does it all most elegantly. Choosing to 'speak' the whole thing is risky.

It is a first-person account, and one of the most important things we learn is that Beauty isn't beautiful at all, at least at the beginning of the story. The boldest decision is to make the words those of Beauty herself. The way she has written it has, moreover, added so much that is original and strange that a reader feels as though it's all unfolding for the very first time.

Robin McKinley, who wrote this book a quarter of a century ago and published it in the US, has treated the tale with respect and care, and she tells it straight. They may very well never read or see another account of one of the most moving stories in the world. Beauty and the Beast may be familiar to many, but for a lot of children the version they know best is the Disney cartoon. There will be those who ask: why write at such length when all you're doing is going over old ground? Or why does such a good writer choose to raid the traditional canon of fairytales instead of making up new stuff ? The third question everyone will ask is what, in advertising jargon, is this book's target audience?

Beauty mckinley