Picture taken from:
http://www.amazon.com/Beastly-ebook/dp/B004IK8Q2W/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&qid=1318801618&sr=1-1
Summary:
Beastly is a modern retelling of the classic fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast. The story is told through the eyes of Kyle Kingsman, a good looking, rich, vain teenager who insults a witch and is made into an ugly monster. In order to break the spell, Kyle must love and be loved in return.
Kyle’s father is just as vain and selfish as he is and actually moves Kyle out of their home and forces him to live alone with his tutor and maid.
Kyle has two years to grow as a person and gain the love of a women in his current ugly state. The witch gave him a magic mirror where he can look upon everyone he wants. He find himself attached to a girl who attended his high school. This girl is someone he never thought of before, but finds that she lives with her abusive father. Kyle ends up making a deal with her father, after he catches him trying to break into his home. The deal includes that the girl stays with him. Eventually Kyle befriends the girl, they fall in love an the spell is broken.
Citation:
Flinn, A. (2007). Beastly. New York, New York: HarperCollins.
Impression:
Sweet, but generic story. Flinn recreates the Beauty and the Beast tale through the eyes of a teenage boy who is cursed by a vengeful witch. The story is good, but nothing about it sticks out as exceptional. Flinn does a fairly decent job of developing a dynamic character through Kyle, but the plot predictable and stale and the beauty character is flat and underdeveloped. I know that the story itself is well known, but I was hoping that the author would develop a more interesting way of retelling it. The ending was a big let down. Way too happy and perfect an ending. I want reality and believability.
Reviews:
Flinn stays so close to traditional 'Beauty and the Beast' tales that her version becomes almost disappointing in its predictability, and the characterizations are similarly mundane. predictability, and the characterizations are similarly mundane. With a nod toward her contemporary setting, however, she does introduce the internet. . . . There is something insightful, if a bit sad, in [Kyle's] Beauty being the codependent daughter of a drug addict. . . . Though there are superior revisionings of the tale, readers may still be intrigued to see the beast find love in the contemporary world.
Citation:
Coats, K. (2007). [Beastly] [book review]. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, 61(2), 84. Retrieved from http://bccb.lis.illinois.edu/
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In this unusual foray into fantasy by an author best known for gritty realism, a wealthy, narcissistic ninth-grader, Kyle, plans a mean trick right out of Stephen King’s Carrie; less than 24 hours later, he has been transformed by his victim (an undercover witch) into a hairy beast and given two years to break the spell. The remainder of Flinn’s Beauty and the Beast retelling chronicles Kyle’s redemption from his own, rapidly evolving point of view, culminating in his sensitively forged relationship with houseguest-hostage Lindy, whose presence in the beast’s Brooklyn mansion is explained in a manner befitting the contemporary setting. Flinn’s storytelling is least convincing whenever the reality beyond the mansion intrudes, with comic chat-room interludes seeming especially jarring. Some readers may also question why a public outburst of violence committed by Kyle has no consequences. But through her character’s psychological transformation, Flinn finds ways to address some larger, painful truths about male adolescence, making this a rare fairy-tale-inspired novel with equally strong appeal for boys and girls.— Jennifer Mattson
Citiation
Mattson, J. (2008, February 8). [Beastly] [book review]. Booklist Online. Retrieved from http://www.booklistonline.com/Beastly-Alex-Flinn/pid=1975165
Uses:
- Have a book and a movie night; first have students read Beastly and then watch the movie.
- Use Beastly in a display of modern fairytale retellings.
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