Beauty and the Beast a personalised book with your child as the hero

Once upon a time there was a merchant who had three daughters. The youngest was so kind and so lovely that everybody called her Beauty. Her sisters liked fine dresses and parties, but Beauty liked books, and gardens, and looking after her father.

One winter the merchant had to go on a long journey. "What shall I bring you back?" he asked his daughters. The elder two asked for silk dresses and pearls. Beauty only said, "Bring me a rose, Father. None grow here in the snow."

On the way home the merchant lost the road in a snowstorm. He wandered for hours, cold and frightened, until he came upon a great castle where every window was lit. He knocked, but nobody answered. The door swung open by itself, so he went in. A fire was blazing in the hall, and a table was laid with hot soup and bread, as if somebody had been expecting him. The merchant ate, and slept in a soft bed, and in the morning he still had not seen a living soul.

As he left, he passed through a garden where roses bloomed in the middle of winter. "Beauty asked for a rose," he thought, and he picked one.

At once there was a terrible roar. In front of him stood a Beast, huge and hairy, with claws and horns and a voice like a bear's.

"I gave you a fire and a bed and a supper," growled the Beast, "and you steal my roses? For that you must stay here for ever."

The merchant fell on his knees and explained that the rose was for his youngest daughter.

"Then go home," said the Beast, "and say goodbye. But one of you must come back and live in this castle."

When the merchant told his daughters, Beauty did not hesitate. "It was my rose, Father," she said. "I'll go."

So Beauty rode to the castle, and the great gates swung shut behind her. The courtyard was bigger and quieter than any room she had ever stood in, and she was very frightened.

That evening the Beast came to see her. He was every bit as fearsome as her father had said, but he spoke gruffly and quietly, and he did not come too close.

"Are you afraid of me?" he asked.

"Yes," said Beauty honestly.

"I don't blame you," said the Beast. "But nobody here will harm you. This castle is yours now."

The castle was enchanted, and nothing in it was quite ordinary. At dinner the candles lit themselves, and a silver candlestick bowed and chattered as it lit the way. A round little teapot hopped along the table, pouring tea and talking nineteen to the dozen, and a magic mirror on the wall could show anywhere in the world you asked it to. Every night the Beast came to dinner and sat with Beauty, and every night she was a little less afraid.

"Go anywhere you like," he told her, "except one room in the far tower."

But one day Beauty lost her way and found herself in that room. There was a torn portrait on the wall of a young man with kind, sad eyes, and on a table under a glass dome stood a single red rose, slowly dropping its petals. Beauty tiptoed out again, and she never told the Beast she had been there. But she wondered.

The next morning the Beast opened a door on to a library so tall that the ladders had wheels. "All of it is yours," he said, and Beauty clapped her hands. She read to him in the evenings, and he listened. In the snowy garden they fed the birds together, and when a robin landed on the Beast's great paw, he laughed out loud, and the servants said it was the first time he had laughed in a hundred years. And in the evenings, after dinner, they danced in the ballroom.

Every night, the Beast asked the same question. "Beauty, will you stay here with me always?"

And every night Beauty said gently, "You are my dear friend, Beast. But I miss my father."

One evening she asked the magic mirror to show her home. In the glass she saw her father, ill and alone, sitting by a cold fire.

"Oh, Beast," she cried, "he needs me!"

The Beast was quiet for a long time. Then he opened the gates himself.

"Go," he said. "Look after him. And don't hurry back on my account."

Beauty went home and nursed her father until he was well again. But all the while she thought about the Beast, alone in his great quiet castle. One night she dreamed of him lying still in the snowy garden, and she woke with a start.

She rode back through the snow as fast as she could. She found the Beast lying in the garden beside the rose bushes, too sad even to lift his head. In the far tower the very last petal was about to fall.

"Oh, Beast, don't be sad," cried Beauty, kneeling beside him in the snow and taking his paw. "I came back. I'll always come back. You're the kindest friend I have ever had, and I love you dearly."

As she spoke, the first light of morning broke over the castle, and the last petal stayed on the rose. A shimmer ran through the garden, and the Beast was gone. In his place, holding her hand, was the young man from the portrait, with the same kind eyes.

"A spell was cast on me long ago," he said, "and only somebody's true kindness could break it. Thank you, Beauty."

All through the castle, the candlestick and the teapot and all the other enchanted things turned back into the cheerful people they had once been. Beauty's father came to live at the castle, the library was full of readers again, and the garden bloomed every winter, with roses for anyone who asked.