HIPPOLYTA AND THE CURSE OF THE AMAZONS

Zena fans take heed: Yolen and Harris draw a minor figure from old Greek tales front and center for an edifying, as well as action-filled, encounter with quarreling gods, monsters, rival Amazons, and—ugh—men. To save her mother’s life and throne, teenaged princess Hippolyta spirits her newly born brother off to his father, the arrogant Trojan king Laomedon, in hopes of gathering military aid. Instead, she’s lashed to a headland for a sea monster to eat. Enter Laomedon’s other son, chatty nine-year-old Tithonus, to free her, and to accompany her on a subsequent mission to the ancient, dead city where the Amazons had originally been forced to become warriors after their men were all slain in a squabble between Artemis and Apollo. The authors energetically carry their irritable, warlike protagonist and her garrulous companion (Tithonus: “I knew we’d have been better off with a chariot. A person doesn’t get cranky in a chariot”) past one threat after another, as well as Hippolyta’s firm conviction that all males are hateful. Ultimately, she even defends Tithonus from bloodthirsty Artemis, and learns that her own father is Ares, presented here as a wise, big-brotherly sort who pops up repeatedly in various guises to save Hippolyta’s bacon. As in the “Young Heroes” series opener, Odysseus in the Serpent Maze (2001), the level of explicit violence may be low but the action is nonstop, fleshed out with accurate details from both history and myth that will give readers a taste of what the classical stories themselves have to offer. (Fiction. 11-13)