#352 of 1001 · July 18, 2021

Let’s dive back into the world of fairy tales with another themed week of exploration—this time around, it’s Beauty and the Beast! To begin, we have a version by former spouses Marianna and Mercer Mayer. Her elegant text and his lush illustrations combine to form a rich and ethereal setting filled with enticing details. The beast’s palace contains subtle but unmistakable imagery drawn from ancient Egyptian art: pharaonic columns, carved hieroglyphs in cartouches, jackals, falcons, serpents, bulls, scarabs, and a large stone sphinx. The beast himself resembles a ferocious, digitigrade otter. A note for folklore enthusiasts: Beauty and the Beast was originally a novella-length story (of about one hundred pages) written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in her 1740 collection La Jeune Américaine et Les Contes Marins. In 1756, the tale was substantially abridged by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in Magasin des Enfants. Marianna Mayer has used the structure of de Beaumont’s adaptation as the basis for her story, but reintroduced a subplot from de Villeneuve’s original, in which Beauty receives visits from a mysterious young man in her dreams. #beauty #beast #palace #rose #mirror #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbook #beautifulbooks #beautifulbookcover #beautifulbookcovers #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks