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NEW BOOK! from Random House Publishing
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GirlTech.com
Here is the traditional fairy tale of Beauty and The
Beast retold by Molly Coxe. Bunny is a thoughtful, well-read
young rabbit who stays true to her beliefs as she and
the Beast (a bull terrier) travel the road of self-realization
and form a strong and lasting friendship along the way.
Told with refreshing humor, the story is lavishly illustrated
by artist Pamela Silin Palmer. Her colorful, fanciful,
detailed images bring the story to new magical heights
completely absorbing the reader in the magical world
she creates. |
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Publisher's Weekly
January 8, 2001
Coxe (Big Egg) and Silin-Palmer (The Nightingale and
the Wind) bring humor, if not air-tight internal logic,
to this full-dress retelling of a familiar tale. Here,
a rabbit merchant down on his luck strikes a deal with
a rose-keeping Beast. The character's brisk repartee
keeps the story moving at a pace worthy of any scurrying
rabbit. For example, after the Beast asks the merchant
to bring him one of his daughters, the distraught man
wails, "If you must devour someone, devour me,"
to which the quick-witted Beast replies, "If I
were merely hungry, I would have eaten you already,"
The language, the length of the text and the type size
are most appropriate for older readers. Silin-Palmer's
sprawling, elaborate paintings command attention with
their elegant floral borders and bountiful details:
lavish costumes, lush gardens dominated by rabbit-shaped
topiary, frog courtiers. The artist's choice of a benign-looking
bull terrier to play the role of Beast seems at odds
with the text ("His eyes were angry, his teeth
were sharp, and his claws were long," writes Coxe
at the Beast's first appearance); how is this dog more
"beastly" than a rabbit? Readers who don't
want to look to closely at the story's workings, however,
can content themselves with its pretty trappings. |
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Kirkus Reviews
January 15, 2001
A recasting of Beauty and the Beast where the characters
are rabbits -- and the Beast is a very large dog. The
story line is fairly traditional, even to the reasons
Beauty -- here, Bunny -- and here family must move to
the country (he father loses and then regains his merchant
fleet), and the telling is a bit on the twee side. What
is astonishing here are the pictures, voluptuously illustrated
like Arcimboldo, Fantin-Latour, and Fragonard rolled
into one. The pages are covered in perfectly painted
flowers and adornments of every description, gardens,
interiors, and hearthsides. Bunny herself and all the
other characters are bedizened with silks, velvets,
and ornament, and little frog-elves in courtly dress
appear to comment by their presence on the action. The
emphasis is silly rather than serious, and it is immensely
satisfying to peer at the pages to pick out the odd
butterfly, bunch of grapes, or other sumptuous element.
The doggy Beast does indeed become a rabbit prince,
and a tailpiece shows one of the frogs reading the tale
to a passel of bunny babies. Of course. |
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a butterfly or froggy for fortunes! |
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