For readers who need their endings safe.
The myth of the power of music and love is retold for middle-graders with nuanced beauty but marred by a happy epilogue.
The veteran storytellers who reworked this story have made a creditable and even beautiful version, using language that is clear and stately. Orpheus is a musician who can make even the trees dance. A bad omen at his wedding is fulfilled when, the next day, his bride, Eurydice, goes for a walk at dawn and is felled by a snake bite. Orpheus follows her down into the underworld, and his music so moves Persephone and her husband, Hades, that the god of the underworld allows Eurydice to return to life. Orpheus must not look back until they reach the world of the living. Alas, she trips, he turns to help her, and she is gone. Orpheus pours out his grief in music until the jealous god Dionysius inflames a group of women to hack Orpheus to pieces, although his head and his lyre continue to play and sing. In this version, Persephone restores memory to both Orpheus and Eurydice so they can spend the afterlife together—an interpolation that provides emotional relief but guts the story of its power. The rich, matte illustrations are done in a pleasing, patterned style that complements the vivid, never sensational telling.
For readers who need their endings safe. (pronunciation guide, bibliography, family tree of the Greek gods, Olympians) (Mythology. 8-12)Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-84686-784-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
“See that shadow there? Could be the bunyip coming to get you! See that thing under the water, way too big to be a fish? That’s him, all right. Better run.” Though Pearson has done a poor job of scholarship, not only skipping source notes entirely, but billing her severely abridged version of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” as anonymously “North American,” these fourteen retold tales are just right for reading late at night, under the sheets, with the bedroom door closed. Her renditions are readable, tellable, and matter of fact, taking readers from graveyard (“The Brave Little Tailor”) to fen (“The Buried Moon”), from Bluebeard’s castle to an igloo where a lonely fisherman’s tears bring a “Skeleton Woman” back to life. Amply illustrating the pages, Rowe adds gleefully atmospheric touches: rows of eyes peer out of the murky swamp; Vasilissa’s father looks on with mild surprise as she blasts her cruel stepmother to ashes with a glowing skull; the wolf grins up at viewers as a cautionary lesson to all who “cry wolf” needlessly. Ready for some chills? Don’t forget to check those flashlight batteries. (Folktales. 10-12)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-56656-377-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Crocodile/Interlink
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
A true-to-life portrait of a young girl’s cheerful selfishness in this surprisingly optimistic novel of unrelenting poverty
Homeless orphan Valli is always friendly, if amoral.
When Valli can, she sneaks glimpses at Bollywood dances, learns a little reading or throws rocks at the monsters—people without faces or fingers—who live on the other side of the tracks. Most of the time, however, she picks up coal. Sick of beatings, hunger and coal, Valli hides on a passing truck, fleeing her life of poverty for a life of… well, more poverty, but also more excitement. On the Kolkata streets she lives day-to-day. Constantly starving, she contentedly begs and steals; when she has something she doesn't need (a bit of extra soap, a blanket), she passes it on to somebody else. When Valli tries her luck begging from kind Dr. Indra, she learns she has leprosy, just like the faceless monsters back home. It takes some time, but Valli learns to accept help from the women who offer it to her: Dr. Indra, who works at the leprosy hospital; Neeta, a sales manager with leprosy who teaches Valli how to make pie charts; Laxmi, a teenager who's been burned. An emphasis on Christmas falls discordant, but Valli’s journey from stubborn solitude to member of a community is richly fulfilling.
A true-to-life portrait of a young girl’s cheerful selfishness in this surprisingly optimistic novel of unrelenting poverty . (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-55498-134-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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