Ten YA Retellings of Beauty and the Beast

By Lilian Calix
January 30, 2015

The original "Beauty and the Beast"  fairy tale was written by Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont. Beauty and the Beast tells the romantic tale of one fair maiden and a prince who has been cursed to look like a beast. The love of the young woman helps to free the prince from the curse and he becomes a handsome young man once again. They fall in love and live happily ever after. 

Beastly by Alex Flinn 
Kyle Kingsbury is turned in to a beastly creature by a classmate. This modern tale on the retelling of "Beauty and the Beast"  is told from the point of view of the Beast. Kyle is a vain Manhattan private school student  who is turned into something beastly until he finds love and breaks the curse. The Beastly film was released in 2011. 

Cruel Beauty (Cruel Beauty Universe, #1)  by Rosamund Hodge
Seventeen-year-old Nyx Triskelion  is a engaged to a engaged to a demon who rules her country. She has been trained her entire life to kill him. To fufill her destiny she must move to the castle to be his wife. Living in the castle Nyx finds her self attracted by the demons charms... however  Nyx's task is to save her home...

Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey JayWhen nineteen-year-old Gem of the Desert People, called Monstrous by the Smooth Skins, becomes the prisoner of Princess Isra, a seventeen-year-old Smooth Skin, age-old prejudices begins to fall aside as the two begin to understand each other.

Beauty and the Beast: The Only One Who Didn't Run Away by Wendy Mass 
"In this retelling Beauty meets a young man who has been cursed by a witch t to look like a beast until a girl willingly dances with him."

Beast by Donna Jo Napoli 
"Elaborates on the tale of 'Beauty and the Beast,' told from the point of view of the beast and set in Persia. Meet the Beast — before there was Beauty Orasmyn is the prince of Persia and heir to the throne. His religion fills his heart and his mind, and he strives for the knowledge and leadership his father demonstrates. But on the day of the Feast of Sacrifices, Orasmyn makes a foolish choice that results in a fairy's wretched punishment: He is turned into a beast, a curse to be undone only by the love of a woman. Thus begins Orasmyn's journey through the exotic Middle East and sensuous France as he struggles to learn the way of the beast, while also preserving the mind of the man. This is the story of his search, not only for a woman courageous enough to love him, but also for his own redemption."

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas is the first in a new series. The novel began as a Beauty and the Beast retelling that became its own original tale along the way. In A Court of Thorns and Roseswe meet tells nineteen year old Feyre. While Feyre is out in the woods she kills a wolf and a beast-like creature, named Tamlin, arrives to claim revenge for the murder. Feyre is taken to the Fae lands by Tamlin, there her hatred begins to change and turn to love for him. As an evil shadow grows over the fae land Feyre must find a way to stop it and save Tamlin and the fae world.  

The Merchant's Daughter by Melanie Dickerson (Available as an e-book)
"In 1352 England, seventeen-year-old Annabel, granddaughter of a knight and a would-be nun, eludes a lecherous bailiff but falls in love with Lord Le Wyse, the ferocious and disfigured man to whom her family owes three years of indentured servitude, in this tale loosely based on Beauty and the Beast."

Belle A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Cameron Dokey 
"Belle, who lacks her sisters' beauty, spends her time alone with her wood carving, until she must carve the fabled Heartwood Tree to save her father from the Beast."

Beauty A Retelling of the Story of Beauty & the Beast by Robin McKinley 
"Kind Beauty grows to love the Beast at whose castle she is compelled to stay and through her love releases him from the spell which had turned him from a handsome prince into an ugly beast."

Rose Daughterby Robin McKinley 
"Beauty grows to love the Beast at whose castle she is compelled to stay, and through her love he is released from the curse that had turned him from man to beast."