Celebrate Halloween and Christmas With Ichabod and Mr. Toad

The Wind in the Willows and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are two classic pieces of literature, but I wouldn’t have thought to put them together. Disney did, though, and the result was the 1949 package film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. It’s unusual in that it tells just two stories; the package films typically include several different segments, each of which is shorter than either tale told here. What it amounts to is about half an hour per story, so there’s room for some decent development even though neither one is individually of feature length.

The main thematic tie between the stories seems to be that they are literary classics, one from England, one from America. Other similarities can be found; for instance, both integrally involve a holiday and a horse-drawn cart. Mostly, though, the tie between the two is that these are books that could be sitting on the shelf next to each other. Basil Rathbone is the sophisticated narrator of the first part of the film, which focuses on the reckless Mr. Toad, and his warm voice is perfectly suited to the task. Bing Crosby feels like less of a natural narrator for the second half, which deals with Ichabod Crane, but the role allows him to do some singing, which is the task at which he really shines.

I prefer the first tale, which is much livelier, in part because each of the characters is played by a different actor and there is quite a bit of dialogue. Toads seem to be inherently troublesome creatures, more so than frogs, which have a bit of a reputation in fiction for steady dependability. After all, look at Kermit the Frog (at least, when he’s not blowing a gasket). The contrast is strongest in Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad series, and silly, sulky Toad with his peculiar whims would certainly have a kindred spirit in Mr. Toad. They’re not bad fellows, but trouble seems to follow them, and sometimes they bring it upon themselves.

The story of Mr. Toad is set in the idyllic English countryside, where the eccentric millionaire is constantly wreaking havoc with his dangerous obsessions. It’s up to his faithful, long-suffering friends to keep him out of trouble and to try to prove his innocence after he runs afoul of the law. Toad is rather obnoxious but lovable nonetheless. Severe Angus MacBadger (Campbell Scott), who oversees his affairs, is a fun character, particularly because of his pronounced Scottishness, but he is less prominent than the even-keeled Rat (Claud Allister) or my favorite character, mild-mannered Mole (Colin Campbell). Other characters, including Mr. Toad’s horse and a freakish-looking villain named Mr. Winky, come into the picture, but this is the core quartet. It’s a raucous romp and a touching story of friendship set partially against the beauty of a pristine English Christmas, and it’s quite satisfying.

I’m not quite as fond of Ichabod’s story, partly because it’s just plain creepy. It makes me chuckle that in a film that includes a Christmas story, Crosby, who is so associated with the upcoming holiday, narrates the tale set at Halloween. It also strikes me as funny that the Christmas story comes first. The animation of a fiery New England autumn is quite appealing, but the human characters aren’t quite as enjoyable to look at as the animals in the first story. Ichabod in particular is a bit goofy-looking, though this would not necessarily be a drawback if he were a more likable character. Unfortunately, this gangly schoolteacher is a lazy womanizing glutton who can’t wait to hitch his wagon to the richest girl in town so he can live like a king for the rest of his days. Hence, although he’s the protagonist, he doesn’t exactly inspire a great deal of affection from me. It doesn’t help that there’s so little actual dialogue in this story, and what’s there is mostly voiced by Crosby. This makes the characters in this segment feel much more distant, leading to a definite sense of detachment.

The meat of the story is the rivalry between Ichabod and burly Brom Bones, who both want the pretty heiress Katrina Van Tassel for a wife, though love doesn’t seem to be a factor for either of them. They both appear to see her as more of a prize than a person. Brom reminds me a lot of Gaston from Disney’s much later Beauty and the Beast except that he is not quite so immensely popular. Still, he makes a potent adversary, and his dramatic ghost story is enough to give Ichabod a major case of the heebie-jeebies. Me too. The headless horseman scene that follows is truly terrifying, no matter what your interpretation of the incident is.

I’m not sure that this is the most natural pair of stories to put together, but it works well enough, and each is memorable in its own way. While I personally don’t want anything to do with Sleepy Hollow except around Halloween, I’m happy to pay a visit to Mr. Toad any time of year.

Chaos Ensues With Donald Duck at the Toy Store

There’s a wonderful scene in the Tom Hanks movie Big in which the main character, a 12-year-old kid in the body of a 30-year-old, goes to an expansive toy store and simply basks in the visceral delight of playing with just about everything in sight. The owner is so charmed by his enthusiasm that he not only joins him for an unconventional rendition of Heart and Soul on the giant stompable keyboard, he makes him a special consultant.

In the Golden Easy Reader Donald Duck at the Toy Store, the owner has a much less favorable reaction when Donald Duck decides to start trying out the merchandise. While it’s the same-old-toys malaise of his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie that prompts the excursion, Donald is the one who goes nuts when they arrive at the store, and his idea of testing out the toys seems to involve breaking them and everything in the vicinity. What a calamity for the shopkeeper! What an embarrassment for the triplets! What can be done to make him stop?

This book, written by Joan Phillips and illustrated by Willy Ito, Claudia Mielnik and Roy Wilson, is similar in tone and format to other Golden Easy Readers starring Donald, particularly Donald Duck, TV Star. Basically, it involves Donald making a mess and the boys (or ducklings, I suppose) trying to clean it up. In this book, however, it all starts with him wanting to do something nice for his nephews, so it’s hard to fault him too much. But once he gets to that store, a sort of madness overtakes him. The pictures capture that crazed enthusiasm very well, particularly with the rings in his eyes.

Like other books in this series, it uses a lot of repetition, particularly in the middle section, which involves one of the nephews pointing something out as a good toy, then Donald offering to try it, injuring himself as a result and declaring it a bad toy. It reminds me of the Berenstain Bears book in which Papa Bear takes his son and his fellow scouts on a camp-out and insists on showing them how to do everything, which inevitably leads to disaster and to them using their own expertise to fix the damage he’s done. Donald, like Papa Bear, is a great big kid at heart. While that makes him more lovable, it also makes him more disaster-prone.

The simplicity of the writing makes this book a great one for readers just getting used to a few basic words like “toys” (which appears, in plural or singular form, 15 times) and “try” (which appears eight times). It’s also a bit of a fun challenge to keep the triplets straight; each one is singled out once, and after that, kids can go through the book and point out who’s who based on their clothes. The fact that all of them have both red and blue on them somewhere makes this even trickier.

This is a fun story that doesn’t discourage enthusiasm but does urge a bit of restraint. I think Donald would be a very fun uncle to have – as long as he doesn’t put everybody in traction.

Quirky Castaway Children Seek Their Heritage in Escape to Witch Mountain

Years ago, I saw the Disney movie Escape to Witch Mountain, and it was one of those films I remembered fondly but vaguely. The memory is much fresher now that I just rewatched the 1975 John Hough fantasy about two orphans with strange abilities trying to figure out exactly who they are.

Those children are the adorable and well-mannered Tia Malone (Kim Richards) and her older brother Tony (Ian Eisenmann). Both have telekinetic powers, but Tia’s are keener, and she also has premonitions and a penchant for telepathy. After their foster parents die, they wind up in an orphanage, but their stay is cut short when the sinister Lucas (Donald Pleasence) gets a dramatic demonstration of her powers, which are of great interest to his rich, power-hungry boss, Aristotle Bolt (Ray Milland). However gilded their new cage may be, it is still a prison, and a dangerous one at that. They make their escape from their posh adoptive home, but how long can they evade such determined captors?

Young children with magical powers automatically make for intriguing movie fodder, and the mystery of their origins makes their story all the more compelling. It helps, too, that these are such incredibly nice kids, and you really want the best for them. Their powers provide ample opportunity for slapstick, particularly once Tia forges a peculiar kinship with a large bear, but this is really more of a drama than a comedy. The heart of the tale is the deep bond the children share and the development of their relationship with Jason O’Day (Eddie Albert), a crusty vagabond in whose trailer the kids hide out after making their escape from Aristotle and Lucas. Their black cat also plays an integral role in the story, particularly in terms of bringing the kids and the avowed kid-hater together.

The cast is strong all around, but Albert and Richards are the two standouts, and his gruff cynicism and her gentle innocence complement each other well. Their quest becomes not only escape from a megalomaniacal millionaire but also a journey of self-discovery as the children begin to remember their past and find a map that may lead to important answers about their family. Both Richards and Eisenmann are veterans of episodes of Little House on the Prairie in which they played unusually pure-hearted children, and that is a quality they both bring to this movie, while Albert’s ornery antics ultimately only serve to make his character more endearing.

It had been ages since I saw Escape to Witch Mountain, so I wasn’t entirely sure if it would hold up well after all this time. Happily, I loved it just as much this time around. Yes, some of the effects were a bit cheesy and I didn't focus too much on plot details beyond the basic short-term quest story, but it gave me the same fuzzy feeling it did when I was a kid. I haven’t seen the recent remake, so I don’t know if that does this one justice, but the original is a prime example of the charm to be found in the best of Disney’s live-action films.

The Grasshopper and the Ants Learn From Each Other

In the 1998 Pixar movie A Bug’s Life, the members of a colony of hardworking ants are routinely bullied into giving most of their carefully collected food to a thuggish grasshopper and his cronies. Decades earlier, Disney presented another story about diligent ants and a lazy grasshopper. In the 1934 Silly Symphony The Grasshopper and the Ants, the larger insect is not cruel, just irresponsible. Though the ants warn him to prepare for the harsh winter weather to come, he continues on his merry way until he is forced to concede that they are right and that he should have spent some of his time getting ready.

The book version of Disney’s take on this ancient fable was written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Larry Moore. The paintings have a drab and rather fuzzy look about them. It certainly looks like a throwback to an earlier time in animation. The grasshopper is a jolly soul with bright, enormous eyes and a wide smile. He wears a red shirt and a green jacket that matches his green top hat, and he plays his fiddle merrily, inviting anyone he meets to join in his revelry. The ants are a bit less distinctive; they are black with brown legs, and many of them wear no clothes at all. Those who do mostly wear only a hat or bow; the queen in her regal pink gown and golden crown is the only one fully dressed.

In the original version of the story, after the grasshopper fails to heed the warnings of the ants, winter catches him by surprise and he appeals to the well-stocked ants for mercy, asking them for food and shelter, but they coldly turn him away. The moral appears to be that it is best to prepare for lean times instead of spending all your days goofing off, but the ants’ lack of charity rankles, so it’s hard to really see their industry as a great virtue under the circumstances.

In Disney’s version, the ants have more sympathy for their foolish friend, so instead of simply leaving him out in the cold to freeze and starve to death, they invite him in and he has the opportunity to repent, make amends and turn over a new leaf. In the original version, I think that while the grasshopper is too lackadaisical, the ants are too harsh. Disney offers a better balance, showing that it is important to work hard but that life is also to be enjoyed and that kindness to one’s neighbors is as high a virtue as dedicated self-sufficiency.

The Disney short includes a song that the grasshopper sings, and that appears in the book as well, though of course, you have to imagine the melody as he sings. The World Owes Me a Living is the name of the song, and it’s rather obnoxious, at least until he changes his tune. The lyrics were written by Larry Morey, but most of the words in the book are Brown’s. A prolific writer of children’s books, she moves the story along artfully, a few sentences at a time. The narration and dialogue is set apart in brown boxes, with the illustrations either taking up a full page or a large portion of the page, set against a white backdrop.

With the new year upon us, we are now in the midst of the winter in which this book concludes, or at least I am in Pennsylvania. I can never quite decide if I am the grasshopper or the ant. I’d like to think I have a pretty decent work ethic and that I manage my resources wisely, but I also spend a lot of time in leisurely pursuits. I think the key is to stick to neither extreme. Be more like the cricket, known for its merry music but associated with the making of sound moral decisions. In the end, in this more optimistic version of Aesop’s classic, the grasshopper comes to appreciate the value of hard work and the ants recognize the worth of merrymaking. All of them are able to appreciate that giving of yourself and letting your efforts bless others carries the sweetest rewards of all.

Disney Princesses Celebrate the Season in Winter Wishes

Earlier this fall, I read a couple of books that place various Disney princesses in autumnal settings. Now, with Christmas almost upon us, I perused the level two Step Into Reading book Winter Wishes, which features six of the ten princesses in the midst of wintry activities.

In this book, Apple Jordan writes in rhyme, which gives the story a nice lilt, though the rhythm is not as strong as it could be. The rhyme pattern is consistently ABCB, but some of the lines are short and some are long. While most pairs are pretty close in length, not all are; one that seems particularly clunky is “Cinderella wishes to go on a snowy coach ride. So Prince Charming takes his lovely bride.”

Cinderella is the last princess to appear in the book, as she was in those other Disney Princess books. She seems to have a slightly elevated status among the Disney princesses. She also appears on the title page, as well as the cover, though Belle is more predominant there. Snow White, Ariel, Jasmine and Briar Rose all have a few pages to themselves in this book too.

Ariel’s is a little strange since she’s under the sea, where I don’t think there are seasons as such, but there also aren’t mermaids, so it’s sort of a moot point. At least it isn’t snowing underwater. Jasmine does have snow in Agrabah, but that’s because Genie can do practically anything, including manipulating the weather.

Unsurprisingly, none of the princesses interact with each other. This is not a cohesive story but a series of vignettes. Snow White starts things off with eight pages, and Cinderella finishes them up with five. The rest have four each. Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella seem to alternate in these books between their pre-prince lives and their Happily Ever Afters, and it’s not always immediately obvious which we’re getting.

Here, though, Briar Rose is still living in the woods with the three kindly fairies, while Cinderella has clearly taken up residence in the castle. Snow White’s section does not mention the prince at all, but given the short time she was with the dwarfs, it seems likely that this Christmas celebration is taking place during a later visit rather than her initial stay.

While Aladdin does not play a part in this book, his presence is implied by Genie, so Jasmine’s portion takes place at least after the first movie, while the Beast is still in his cursed form, so Belle’s takes place before the end of Beauty and the Beast. Ariel, as pretty much always seems to be the case, remains a mermaid, so her segment appears to be a prequel.

All of the sections are pretty similar, with feasting, snow and Christmas trees common to most of the stories. Not everyone has specific winter wear, but those that do look quite elegant, especially Cinderella, the top of whose dress looks like something Mrs. Claus would wear. It’s very fun and festive. While there could have been a bit more variety in the traditions presented, Winter Wishes is a vibrant seasonal choice for young readers who love the Disney princesses.

A Boy and a Goose Need a Miracle in Chester, I Love You

I have spent almost every Thanksgiving at home, usually with a few guests, sometimes with just my immediate family. However, there were a couple Thanksgivings when we celebrated somewhere else. On one of those occasions, we went to my grandparents' house. Oddly, what really stands out from that long-ago year is watching a made-for-TV Disney movie called The Thanksgiving Promise, in which a boy raises a one-legged goose for his neighbor to eat on Thanksgiving. Of course, it doesn't take long for the boy and the bird to bond, and young Travis hatches a plot to teach Chester how to fly before the fateful day arrives. But can it be done?

I couldn't find that special when I looked for it, but I did run across Chester, I Love You, the novel that inspired it. This edition has a photo from the movie on the cover and an acknowledgment to Disney on the inside. Written by brothers Blaine and Brenton Yorgason, this novel, inspired by their own childhood experiences, follows Travis Tilby, a scrawny kid who is always getting picked on by his peers and a bullying gym teacher.

Travis lives on a humble farm with two athletic older brothers and a gentle little sister, but his is a largely solitary life until Chester comes along. He and the goose seem to understand one another, and they soon become inseparable. He's certainly doing a good job of keeping the misfit goose in good health, but his personal goal of helping him escape his fate seems less and less attainable as the months speed onward from May to November. What Travis needs is a miracle.

This book is written with a folksy narrative style, and it is populated with characters who make colorful remarks like "Arid land-o-Goshen!" and spontaneously burst into sermons at every opportunity. The Tilbys are a hard-working, God-fearing family, and matters of faith play an important role in the story. Sometimes of the parents' dialogue comes across as a bit clunky, since it seems that what they are saying is almost aimed more at the reader than the child they are addressing. The book also gets rather repetitive at times, and some of the parental heart-to-hearts slow down the action a bit.

Nonetheless, this is a family you want to root for, and it's particularly easy to sympathize with Travis. Many coming of age stories involve a child killing a beloved pet, and I've always found that rather grotesque. Travis's parents are conflicted as to how to deal with their son's plans. They know that killing Chester will utterly devastate him, but they don't want to teach him to shirk responsibility. I confess I found their sense of honor frustrating, especially after Travis tells Mr. Larson, the landlord who gave him Chester, about his plans and he agrees that there will be no hard feelings if Chester flies away before Thanksgiving. What will really be gained by forcing Travis to kill an animal he has spent months trying to protect?

While Travis is the primary focus of the story, there's also a nice subplot involving his older brother Jason and Sheryl, a sweet girl at school who he believes barely knows he exists. The plot thread showing how they relate to each other demonstrates how easy it is to get signals crossed in matters of romance and follows the theme of not backing away from a challenge, whether it's teaching a one-legged goose to fly or expressing your feelings to a longstanding crush. The youngest Tilby, Jenni, adds sweetness to the tale with her pure-heartedness, while second-oldest child Steve is a fount of unexplained animosity. His main purpose in the tale seems to be so Mrs. Tilby can encourage Travis to try her "kill him with kindness" strategy for winning over adversaries; there's a good lesson in there, but Steve never really feels as fully-formed as the other Tilbys.

Although I occasionally found the writing to be excessively clunky or preachy, I mostly enjoyed this story of perseverance and devotion. It would be interesting to see the movie again; I suspect that this is one of those cases in which I like the movie better than the book, but the novel is still a worthwhile read, especially for this time of year.

Rapunzel and Other Disney Princesses Make a Tasty Treat

When I was a kid, fruit snacks were pretty common inclusions in my school lunches. I don’t often eat them anymore, but every once in a while I’ll feel nostalgic for these little pouches of tasty whimsy. On the latest grocery excursion, I picked up a box of Kellogg’s Tangled fruit snacks, and while the form has changed, the basic gist of these treats remains the same.

The Tangled fruit snacks come in a box containing ten pouches. Each pouch contains several of the small, chewy snacks, which the box proclaims are fat free and made with real fruit, making them a source of Vitamin C. Every pouch will set you back 70 calories. Aside from nutritional information, the box features three simple games on the back. There’s a seek and find, a matching challenge and a small trivia section. It’s quite a lot squeezed into a small space, and it works well aside from the very poorly worded question, “What does Gaston say to Belle to free her father?”

Wait, Belle? I thought this was Rapunzel. Yeah, so did I. The front of the box boldly declares “Disney Tangled,” but that’s really a misnomer. Of the six fruit snack designs, only two – purple Rapunzel (grape) and the orange hairbrush (orange) – relate specifically to Disney’s 50th animated feature. A third, a yellow tiara, is pretty much a Disney princess staple.

Yellow, with lemon flavoring, is also the color of Belle. Like Rapunzel, she’s just a head, and the color works much better for her. Every time I look at a Rapunzel snack, I briefly forget and think I’m looking at Pocahontas. The red enchanted rose looks quite nice too; I think it’s cherry, though the flavor isn’t that strong and I can’t quite tell. Finally, Tiana is green and lime-flavored. Hence, we have three different princesses and three props. The front of the box shows Rapunzel’s pet chameleon and Flynn, but neither of them is inside any of the pouches, which are more accurately labeled Disney Princess.

I prefer fruit snacks that have an unmistakable firmness to them. Super-soft ones don’t do much for me. These ones are a little softer than I’d like, but they’re still fairly firm. While some fruit snacks have different coloring but no real difference in flavors, these are distinct from each other, which makes them a lot more fun to eat. For an occasional snack, they’re pretty good, even though they don’t reflect the movie as much as a quick glance at the front of the box implies.

The Beauty and the Beast Music Box Is a Musical Memory Keeper

When my aunt and uncle took me with them to Disney World earlier this year, I knew that there would be one souvenir I would have to purchase, even if I didn’t get anything else. That was a pair of Mickey Mouse ears, which I would then wear around the parks in order to immerse myself in the experience as completely as possible. I got those ears on the first day, but after that, I found myself pretty overwhelmed by all of the merchandise for sale. How would someone as indecisive as me ever choose?

In the end, I mostly stuck with a few small goodies, and I bought the Belle music box both as a reminder of the trip and an attractive way to store mementos. This box is made of hard cardboard, but it feels more substantive than that. Until I did a little checking, I thought it was plastic or perhaps wood coated with shiny yellow paint. Despite being dressed in blue when we first see her, yellow is the color with which Belle is most readily associated. This shows her in her iconic ball gown twice on the outside of the box and once on the inside, and the box itself is yellow and features a delicate pattern of yellow roses.

For the most part, the outside is flat, but the top of the box is textured, and Belle , visible from about the waist up, stands with a red rose in her gloved hand. Near her is the name “Belle” scrawled in cursive, and it seems we are supposed to see this as her signature. She stands in the middle of a pale yellow heart, and her pose seems rather flirtatious; one side of the collar on her dress is falling down her shoulder as she tilts her head coquettishly. I prefer the head shot on the front, in which she rests her chin on her hand and seems to sigh happily.

On the front of the box is a brass clasp. Lift it up over the knob and open the box, and you will find a yellow interior and a tiny plastic Belle in her ball gown spinning gracefully in front of an oval mirror with brass trim. Three sides of the bottom of the inside of the box are pale yellow with printed hearts. The rest of the box is a brighter shade of yellow and has a slightly fuzzy texture. Assuming that you have turned the key in the back of the box, a tinkly version of Beauty and the Beast will play when you lift the lid. It will also play if you turned the key last time and put the lid down before it wound down again.

This music box is about five inches in all directions, a good size for a jewelry box. I’m sure that there are lots of young girls who use it for that purpose. As for me, I use it to keep trinkets of sentimental significance. I keep the box on my nightstand, so whenever I want to, I can reach over, turn the key and get a snippet of that iconic song. While I actually find the light-hearted Something There to be more romantic, in part because it is more personal, the movie’s title song is definitely the right choice for this music box, and it would make a great keepsake for anyone who loves that Disney masterpiece as much as I do.

Add Some Color to Your Keys With Donald Duck

Keys are very important objects, but they can also be befuddling. Most of them have either a silver or gold color to them, and the general shapes are usually so similar across the board that shuffling through a large set of keys can be a rather infuriating experience. If you’re standing at the front door itching to get in out of the rain, you don’t really want to have to search too hard for the correct key. One thing that has made things easier in my house is buying novelty keys and having them cut into the shape of our house key.

I first ran across these cheerful keys in a hardware store a few years ago. I was so charmed that I had to get one for myself, and with so many different designs to choose from, I encouraged my parents to do the same. Now we have several floating around the house. The spare key hanging above the stove is this particular design, which is Donald Duck.

Donald stands against a backdrop of bright green grass and clear blue sky. In the background are a cozy red farmhouse and a couple of trees. Donald himself is decked out in his traditional sailor suit, and he wears a big smile on his face. I often think of Donald as being frustrated, but that isn’t the case here. In fact, he looks very proud of himself. Given that this is a house key, I might venture a guess that he is proud because he is a homeowner. He certainly looks very satisfied about something as he stands there with his hands on his hips and beams.

The key is sturdy and works just as well as the original for getting into the house. This one simply hangs on the key ring with a couple of smaller keys, and finding the right key amongst them was never really an issue, as it was in with my parents’ much larger sets of keys. In their cases, having a key like this saves time because finding it is so much easier. Here, it just makes me smile to see Donald grinning at me while I turn the key to get into the house. The cheer is infectious.

Since I first came across these keys, I have seen them at multiple hardware stores. Many different designs are available, but Disney seems to be especially well represented. They only cost a few dollars, and getting a copy of your key made with this mold only takes a matter of minutes. Since the main point is making that particular key stand out, I wouldn’t recommend getting more than a couple of them – maybe your house key and car key, if your car key isn’t electronic. Some designs work better with certain key shapes than others, so that is something to be aware of; the person doing the key cutting should be able to tell you whether the design you have selected will be a good fit for your key.

I think that having Donald Duck on that key is a great idea. These snazzy designs make finding the right key in a pinch easier and express your personality and interests at the same time. What a fun thing to have on your key ring!

Enchanted Friends Help With the Beast's Feast

One of Disney’s most iconic scenes is the romantic evening Belle and her hairy host share in Beauty and the Beast as he tries to work up the nerve to confess that he loves her. While what everybody remembers about that scene is the elegant ballroom dance that sends them spinning around the room, it is preceded by dinner, and that is the focus of The Beast’s Feast, a level two Disney’s First Reader written by Gail Tuchman and illustrated by Eric Binder and Darren Hont.

At the end of the story, we see the Beast in his snazzy blue outfit that looks like some sort of Naval dress uniform, and Belle is glowing in her golden gown. Mostly, though, Belle is out of sight, and the Beast wears his purple cape as he consults with his household staff over the particulars of the evening’s entertainment. Both characters are well rendered except when it comes to Belle’s eyes, which appear to be a grayish hazel instead of the rich chestnut brown they usually are. Considering the fact that I am pleasantly accustomed to sharing both hair and eyes with my favorite Disney princess, I find the color change galling.

Other characters featured here include Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, Chip and the canine footrest, and they are all in fine form. It is their presence that builds the structure of the book, since the Beast asks each in turn how he or she might contribute to his special evening. (Well, he doesn’t ask the dog specifically, but the pooch’s waggling enthusiasm is evident.) The repetitive structure reminds me of both The Little Red Hen and The House That Jack Built. Like the first, it is a series of pleas for aid, but in this case the friends are much more helpful. Like the second, it builds on itself so that by the end, we have a long string of things that will help make this elegant date as memorable as possible.

The structure mostly works well, though I feel like it’s trying to incorporate rhyme and rhythm, but only halfway, so the result is a little uneven. Sometimes it rhymes and sometimes it doesn’t, and the rhythm is not very strong. Still, the repetition is useful for early readers, and it can be fun to try to anticipate what will come next. Which character will the Beast consult? What services will he or she volunteer? The gentle enthusiasm on the Beast’s face throughout the story increases the anticipation for the grand finale.

This is just a quick tie-in book to a classic movie. Those who know the characters will find nothing surprising here, and those who don’t are lacking the prior character development that makes this scene so wonderful. Still, reluctant readers who love Beauty and the Beast may find the familiar characters enough incentive to give this book a whirl, and anything that helps kids immerse themselves in the wonders of reading is a beautiful thing indeed.