Beauty and the Beast is one of my favourite fairytales (at least the Disney version is), so I was pretty stoked to see it was included in John Patience’s classic treasury series! His storytelling here is pretty lightweight, considering the potential depth of the story, but I did appreciate his illustrations, which made the book a decent (if not top notch) addition to the set. He uses unexpected compositions to give the pictures a unique viewpoint, the costuming was amusingly lush, and there was just a hint of Arthur Rackham to give the visuals some depth, but overall he didn’t take it quite far enough to be a standout. Belle was pretty generic, which I guess makes sense considering that it is the Beast who is the central character, and Patience’s version of him was definitely on the beastly side. He doesn’t reach the scare-adorable factor of Disney, but he wasn’t a bad effort, since it’s a challenge to tread the line between ugly but endearing. The success of Patience’s other books in this series definitely hinge on whatever makes them unique (the patterning in the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Cinderella’s costuming, the marbled backgrounds), and this volume never quite figured out what it’s standout feature was - it had a little bit of silhouettes, medium-complex costumes, and well done but not standout scenery - so it never quite matched up to my expectations for the book. ( )

The classic French fairy-tale of Beauty and the Beast is given a fairly generic interpretation in this picture-book adaptation retold and illustrated by John Patience, and published by bargain-book press Derrydale Books. I'm not sure where I picked it up - on a dollar cart near work, I expect - and I'm honestly not sure why I keep it.

The narrative here has some odd quirks - Beauty seems nastier than in any other version I have read, actually telling the Beast that he is "so ugly" in this version (in the traditional version she tells him that while he is not handsome, he has a good heart, which is more than many better-looking men can boast), and deliberately ignoring a dream in which she is admonished to look past appearances - while the artwork has a cartoonish quality that doesn't appeal to me greatly. The decorative endpapers, with silhouettes that remind me a bit of the work of Jan Pienkowski, are the only feature I like (I think they are why I bought the book in the first place), but they're hardly enough to save the entire project. In sum: this is one I'd recommend only to Beauty and the Beast completists. ( )