Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English
Categories
Books for very young children, children’s picture books & activity books

BEASTKEEPER

Cat Hellisen

Falling in love means becoming a monster.

Sarah has always been on the move. Her mother hates the cold, so every few months her parents pack their bags and drag her off after the sun. She's grown up lonely and longing for magic. She doesn't know that it's magic her parents are running from.

When Sarah's mother walks out on their family, all the strange old magic they have tried to hide from comes rising into their mundane world. Her father begins to change into something wild and beastly, but before his transformation is complete, he takes Sarah to her grandparents?people she has never met, didn't even know were still alive.

Deep in the forest, in a crumbling ruin of a castle, Sarah begins to untangle the layers of curses affecting her family bloodlines, until she discovers that the curse has carried over to her, too. The day she falls in love for the first time, Sarah will transform into a beast . . . unless she can figure out a way to break the curse forever.

Loosely inspired by Beauty and the Beast, Beastkeeper by Cat Hellisen is a haunting, beautiful fantasy tale.

Available products
Book Published 2015-02-01 by Henry Holt

Comments

Evokes half-remembered fairy tales and is slightly reminiscent of works by Neil Gaiman. Every page shimmers with magic. -- Voya

Sarah is precocious, independent, and strong-willed, and the story brims with thought-provoking insights and lyrical descriptions for readers to sink into?especially those who, like Sarah, dream of finding magic in the mundane. (starred review) Read more...

A girl untangles family curses that cause desertion and bitterness - and transformation into beasts. Thirteen-year-old Sarah's life has always been unsettled; her parents move their three-person family often, always "sun-chasing" to avoid cold. One night Sarah's mother tells her father that she's leaving. The reasons that Sarah overhears are cryptic, and suddenly her mother's gone. Sarah and Dad manage, barely (he forgets to shop for groceries, so it's just peanut-butter sandwiches), and she's distracted by an improbable teenage boy named Alan she meets in the nearby Not-a-Forest. But Dad's changing. His wrists are hairier, his teeth lengthen, and he eats meat raw. Without explanation, he abruptly drops Sarah off at a damp, moldy castle with grandparents she never knew existed. Her grandfather's a clawed, furred beast that seems to be an amalgam of bear, wolf and lion, and he's caged. As Sarah confronts her family's curses and the curses' obscure terms, Hellisen's narration is thoughtful and lyrical. Figurative prose is memorable yet never flashy: "The words fell out onto the table and flew away like dandelion seeds, never reaching him"; "a fiddlehead of apprehension unfurled in her chest." Sarah's hearing and smell sharpen; she races through forest and snow. "Beauty and the Beast" shimmers faintly underneath this story, but slant; the meanings here are multiple and surprisingly subtle. A wild, unique fairy tale. (starred review) Read more...