Customer Reviews

The Dragon Prince: A Chinese Beauty & the Beast Tale

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
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An excellent book on Chinese fairy tales about a Prince/Dragon and a poor, but skilled and beautiful peasant girl. It contains exquisite illustrations that captured my preschool and grade school daughters attention. I highly recommend this fantasy book for preschoolers, through grades three. The reading level and some content (reasoning) for older grades. Recommended for students, teachers, and parents.

This book is about a prince who can turn into animals and a farmer who had 7 daughters. The third sister is the evil and greedy one and the seventh sister the youngest daughter, was the prettiest. If it wasn't for her weaving fine shoes the family would have died. In the story the prince is trying to find a wife. So he searched everywhere for one.
If you like Beauty And The Beast you will like this book because this is the same only that it is the Chinese version. They also have the same theme which is don't judge a book by its cover. I know this is the message because in both stories they disguise themselves and they are really are princes
This is an awesome book. I recommend it to young readers for it has excitement, romance, adventure, and more. So pick it up at your local library or buy it at a book store. Hope you enjoy.

In this beautifully illustrated storybook, a simple Chinese farmer is suddenly grabbed by a terrifying dragon. In order to save his life, one of the man's seven daughters must agree to marry the creature. One by one, the daughters leave their father to his fate and hide in fear. Finally his youngest daughter, Seven, sets her father free by agreeing to be the dragon's bride. Of course, it turns out that there's more to the dragon than meets the eye; Seven ends up married to a handsome prince and living the good life in his magical kingdom beneath the sea. The storytelling gets a little clunky as Seven's jealous older sister tries to murder her and assume her identity, but overall the story is enjoyable and reminds readers that it's what's on the inside that really counts. My homeschooled sons and I read this as part of our unit on China; we also recommend The Weaving of a Dream (Picture Puffins), Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China, Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China, and The Lost Horse: A Chinese Folktale.

This is a great story for children and grown-ups. Adults will enjoy reading this book to their children. A nice story from China.

The "Beauty and the Beast" story is an old one. It could be argued that Ovid's Cupid and Pysche is an early version of the story. A brave, intelligent, industrious heroine, a prince hiding his magical origins behind ugliness, and some redemption between not only the heroine and prince but also the outside world and the couple- that is here.

What makes this story different from the others is the inclusion of the old woman at the end. Many have remarked that many European and Asian heroines lack a mother figure, and that loss is perhaps part of the journey she needs to work through. Here, Seven is the industrious youngest daughter of a poor farmer on barren land. She is the only one who takes on nurturing, homebound roles of cooking and sewing. After she is taken by the prince in disguise and they are in the middle of happily ever after, she is betrayed not only by her sisters but also her father. But part of her redemption and even rescue comes from an old woman who nurses her back to health... much like a mother (or perhaps fairy godmother) would. And at the end, when Seven is reunited with her prince, the old woman comes with her! The real happy ending then may not be just that she will have the love of a prince but the care of a mother.

While I enjoyed the story, some of the pictures- photographs?- seemed too realistic for such a fantastical tale. Also, the perspective of the dragon flying through the sky was too off-center, and jarring. However, neither of these should detract from a child's enjoyment of the story.

I bought this book for my three year old son and he quite enjoys it because of the dragon. The vocabulary is a bit difficult but not terribly so. The story is interesting and I am sure it is a book that my son will come back to again happily when he is older.