Welcome to my blog tour stop for The Beast and the Bethany by Jack Meggitt-Phillips. It is an exciting endeavor to be part of such a big tour and to read a beautifully illustrated book! In this post, I will touch on my thoughts on this children’s fiction story! First, take a look at the book blurb:
Beauty comes at a price. And no one knows that better than Ebenezer Tweezer, who has stayed beautiful for 511 years. How, you may wonder? Ebenezer simply has to feed the beast in the attic of his mansion. In return for meals of performing monkeys, statues of Winston Churchill, and the occasional cactus, Ebenezer gets potions that keep him young and beautiful, as well as other presents.
But the beast grows ever greedier with each meal, and one day he announces that he’d like to eat a nice, juicy child next. Ebenezer has never done anything quite this terrible to hold onto his wonderful life. Still, he finds the absolutely snottiest, naughtiest, and most frankly unpleasant child he can and prepares to feed her to the beast.
The child, Bethany, may just be more than Ebenezer bargained for. She’s certainly a really rather rude houseguest, but Ebenezer still finds himself wishing she didn’t have to be gobbled up after all. Could it be Bethany is less meal-worthy and more…friend-worthy?
Content Notes: Bullying.
Thoughts on The Beast and The Bethany
The Beast and the Bethany is a sweet story about a naughty child and the redemption of an old man. It speaks to themes of greed and friendship. We follow a 511 year old man named Ebenezer who has a beast residing on the top floor of his mansion. The beast grants Ebenezer’s wishes in exchange for food. He has an eclectic palette and demands exotic things and beings to eat. When the beast demands to try a child, Ebenezer goes looking for the naughtiest child that he can find. That is how he meets Bethany. But soon Ebenezer learns that there are many sides to a child and naughtiness hides many deep feelings.
Since this is a children’s book, I read it without much expectation for deep themes. In spite of that, there were three things that struck to me as I read: The following in an analysis of Ebenezer’s action and development through the story.
On Being Ageless
Ebenezer is practically immortal because of the annual potions that he gets from the Beast to preserve his youth. One would expect that with over 500 years of living experience, a person would have historical understanding and be capable of navigating the world. However, that is not the case with Ebenezer. He has made it this far purely based on self-interest and the Beast’s help with finances. He has sailed through life by fulfilling the Beast’s fancies so that the Beast would fulfill his.
This has meant taking actions that we would in general find immoral. In the time that Ebenezer has been on his own, he has developed an amoral perspective of life. He doesn’t think twice about finding endangered species for the Beast to eat. He has no care for animals or people. The only thing he is concerned with is keeping the Beast happy for his own youth, since money is not a problem.
But this style of thinking was bound to lead to a crisis eventually. At what point does an amoral person start to think about right and wrong?
On Moral Boundaries
The answer – A Child.
When the Beast wants to eat a child, Ebenezer suddenly finds himself at a moral threshold that he is wants to cross but it feels wrong. He tries to justify this actions of finding a child for the Beast by saying that it is a naughty child – a child no one wants anyway. His makes it his business to find a child, who ends up being Bethany, and throughout, he is telling himself that this is just another request for the Beast for his youth. He has done something similar with his pet cat many centuries ago and he is still alive and young, which is what matters.
On Friendship
But there is something to be said about human connection and as much as Ebenezer does not hope to like Bethany, she is force to be reckoned with. She brings out another side of him. With her, he learns what it means to have a friend and what hurt looks like. His moral threshold gets harder to cross and he starts to hope that he won’t have to do it after all. He starts to look for a way out of this. Can he leave the Beast? Can he give up his youth?
Turns out a friend is all he needs to figure out the solution to his problems. And that friend is Bethany.
Here’s a summary of my reading experience:
Overall, this was an engaging story. It was funny, at times silly, and I bet my 10 year old brother would like it very much. It has illustrations that add to the story well! Personally for me, the plot was predictable.
Be sure to check out the other blogs on the tour by following @The_WriteReads for related tweets. Check out my other reviews, organized by genre on the Book Review Index page.
Will you pick up this book? Tell me in the comments. 🙂
Many thanks to the publisher for providing me a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review, as part of the WriteReads blog tour.
Cover image: Photo by Breno Machado on Unsplash
I want to read this! 😃
Hope you get to soon! 🙂