Beauty and the Beast
Classical Stories · No. 23 — Dinner with a monster, every night, until he isn't one.
- Classical Stories
- 47 min
- Ages 8–13
- 7 chapters
About this audiobook
A rich merchant loses everything — ships, house, fortune — and moves his family to a cottage, where his youngest, called Beauty, is the only one who adapts with grace. Riding home from one last failed venture, the merchant shelters in a palace where dinner serves itself and no one appears; his only mistake is picking a rose from the garden for Beauty. The roar that answers names the price: his life, or a daughter who comes willingly. Beauty goes. And the monster of the palace turns out to keep terrible manners nowhere except in his mirror — every evening, the same shy, awkward, honest question.
Why it's worth a listen
Long before any film, a French governess wrote this tale to teach her pupils to distrust pretty surfaces. A ruined merchant steals a single rose; the price is a daughter. What follows is not a rescue but a long negotiation — courage practiced as courtesy, a monster more honest than most princes, and the slow, real work of learning to see another person. The original is stranger and better than the versions you know.
A question to keep
How do you learn to see anyone truly — including yourself?
Chapters
- Introduction
- The Wind from the Sea
- The Silent Palace
- The Willing Guest
- Nine O'Clock in the Evening
- The Seven-Day Ring
- A Question to Keep