A wealthy merchant loses his fortune and moves his three daughters to a small country house. Years later, returning from a failed business trip, he stops at a strange empty palace in the forest and picks a single rose from its garden. The owner — a frightful beast — appears and condemns him to death for the theft. The merchant's youngest daughter, named Beauty, offers to take her father's place.
The story of La Belle et la Bête was published in its modern form by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756, in a book of moral tales for English schoolgirls (she was working as a governess in London at the time). Across the rest of the eighteenth century the story spread across Europe and became the most enduring fairy tale of romantic transformation. Disney's 1991 version is a direct descendant of Beaumont's version.
The original French is gentle, formal, and very simple. Storica's A1 adaptation preserves the famous scenes (the rose, the magic mirror, Beauty's return home, the dying beast in the garden) and stays inside the most common five hundred words.
Beaumont wrote her version of the tale specifically to teach French to English schoolgirls in the 1750s. The vocabulary is gentle, formal, and very simple — exactly because it was a teaching text. Storica's A1 adaptation tightens further. Every scene takes place in one of three locations (the country house, the palace, the garden), which gives an A1 reader natural vocabulary repetition.
Beginner. You can read short sentences in present tense, recognise the most common 500 words, and follow a simple plot. Past tense is just out of reach.
Yes — every book in the Storica catalog is available in all seven supported languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Beauty and the Beast was originally written in French, but you choose your reading language when you start.
A1. Beginner. You can read short sentences in present tense, recognise the most common 500 words, and follow a simple plot. Past tense is just out of reach.
About one month at fifteen minutes a day. The adaptation runs to 25 short chapters — short enough to read before bed, long enough to actually move your level.
No. Storica's adaptation is the version you read. We keep the characters, plot beats, and tone of the original — and rewrite the language to fit the level. If you've read the original before, you'll recognise the story; if you haven't, the adaptation is a complete reading of the book.
Pick up where you left off. There are no streaks, no penalties, and no notifications begging you back. Day 12 is still Day 12 a week later.
Yes — this is one of our books for early-stage learners. Sentences run short and the vocabulary stays inside the most common five hundred to one thousand words of french.
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