3.) Beauty

        I am reading the book Beauty, by Robin McKinley. I just finished the book and  am glad I read it. Since my last post, Beauty has gone home to see her family and tell her sister Grace that her fiance, Robbie, has come back home to land. The Beast is sad to see her go, but lets her leave for a week. She goes home and realizes how much she really missed her family. Before she left, the Beast gave her a rose the would stay bloomed until the week was up. When the rose started to die, Beauty would know that the Beast was dying. When Beauty tries to return to the castle, she ends up getting there over a week after she left. She finds the Beast dying in his room and has to hurry over to him. He ends up being alive and okay. Beauty realizes that she loves him, and says that she will marry him. He turns into a handsome prince again and they are planning to get married that afternoon.  Beauty's family shows up with other people from the town and they end up having a double wedding with Grace and Robbie.

        I really liked the ending of the book, but I wish that it would have expanded a little more. I felt like I wanted it to go a little bit past them deciding to get married. I thought that the book overall was really good and interesting. It combined a lot of genres of books and kept the story line moving without it seeming really slow. I think that Robin McKinley wrote this book because maybe it was something that she could base off of herself. Maybe she modeled Beauty to be like her or somebody that she knew.

        I still think that the theme of Beauty is that it is what's on the inside that counts. I think that this comes out in the book because even though the Beast is extremely ugly, Beauty still falls in love with him because he is a kind person and loved her. Also, Beauty wasn't very attractive at all before she went to live with the Beast. Her family and people in her town love her and respect her because she is so kind hearted and full of life. I think that the best character is still Beauty because I admire how she fell in love with the Beast despite how he looked. She was very cautious at the beginning of the book, but she learned to love and open up. She also had a very low self-esteem because she was ugly, but it got better after she realized that she wasn't that bad looking.

         I think that an important quote would be when Beauty says, " It's magic, it'll fade away. It's not possible." This shows that Beauty didn't always believe the truth and only thought what she wanted. People today often are too closed minded to things and need to believe a little to make life better. Beauty thought it was just magic. I'm not saying that people in reality believe in magic, but more that they need to open their minds to the possibilities.

        I don't really have any questions left because they were all answered at the end of the book. I just want to know what happened after they got married. I wish that the book said something about this or McKinley wrote a sequel to Beauty.