Rose Daughter

Rose Daughter is a second retelling of the tale of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley, published in 1997. Like McKinley's original Beauty, the heroine has a strong, independent personality that sets her apart from the average fairy-tale female. In the original fairytale, Beauty's sisters were selfish and vain. In Rose Daughter, Beauty's two older sisters are brave and clever respectively, but cannot tolerate people less brave or clever than t... more

Rose Daughter is a second retelling of the tale of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley, published in 1997. Like McKinley's original Beauty, the heroine has a strong, independent personality that sets her apart from the average fairy-tale female. In the original fairytale, Beauty's sisters were selfish and vain. In Rose Daughter, Beauty's two older sisters are brave and clever respectively, but cannot tolerate people less brave or clever than themselves. The impoverishment of the family forces the two older sisters to learn love and patience. In the world of this book, roses can only be grown by using magic and are thus very rare. When the family moves to a lonely cottage left to them in a will from an unknown, distant relative, they find the house surrounded by a strange unpleasantly thorny bush. The sisters and father think the bushes should be uprooted but Beauty argues that nobody would grow such a nasty plant around the house without a reason. There is a local legend that a... less