True to a Disney princess movie though, she’s got a bunch of animals that do her bidding. Her father and brothers love her, but her sisters are filled with jealous hatred of her. Her father was a rich merchant who had unfortunate circumstances, and then through the generosity of the Beast, regained all his wealth again (and more). In the original story, Beauty is the youngest of 12 (6 boys and 6 girls) she’s only 16 years old. No one has any freaking names! It was very confusing towards the end with the fairies because of the lack of names. For a novel though, I wonder why the author, Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve (a mouth full!) didn’t bother making up some names to go with her novel - I mean, her name alone is enough for 5 characters! She refers to everyone as brothers, sisters, etc. I actually never realized that Beauty and the Beast was a novel - I thought it was a short story like The Little Mermaid or Cinderella. Since I’ve already had one book, it just gave me satisfaction to have the complete collection. You’re probably wondering why I’m so critical of the illustrations since I have the complete collection - well, the best way I can explain it is that I like having a complete set. For the price, there are far better quality ones available, with superior illustrations… like oil painting drawings, cardstock pop-ups, designs on every page, etc. You do get the full novel, but since these books are classics, you actually have plenty of illustrated editions to choose from. Also, they market all of their books as “lavishly illustrated with interactive elements” - and I feel that’s a bit of an overstatement.Īctually, their illustrations are not “lavish” by any means.

For a design and illustration company, I was expecting a lot more, especially as renowned as they are - but none of their illustrations have much brilliance. At this point, I feel my critique of the MinaLima books are well known… I’m not crazy about their illustrations for the HarperCollins books.

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