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ANCIENT VOICES

Name: ANCIENT VOICES
Author: Kate Hovey
ISBN: 0-689-83342-3

by Kate Hovey & illustrated by Murray Kimber ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2004

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Hovey follows up Arachne Speaks (2001) with nearly two dozen equally strong, expressionistic poems, introducing Olympians and other immortals either in their own voices, or through the eyes of Ganymede, their once-mortal cupbearer. The poet uses a variety of forms and tones, from Hephaestus’s proud, bitter account of how his father Zeus lamed him, to Aphrodite’s snippy take on the Venus de Milo—“She is beautiful, but cold: / Chipped, stained, / broken / old, / while I still have my youthful charms— / not to mention, both my arms,” or Ganymede’s weary, “When night falls on Olympus, / my spirit’s free to roam / above the moonlit treetops / far away—home.” In witty, Art Deco illustrations, Kimber casts the Muses as a gospel choir, sends Ares thundering past on a motorcycle, and dresses the monumentally proportioned Zeus in a short-pants “King and I” costume. Despite long endnotes, readers already familiar with the Greek and Roman pantheons will be in the best position to by moved, amused, and captivated by this gallery of powerful figures expressing powerful, but also very human, feelings. (Poetry. 12+)

Pub Date: March 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-689-83342-3

Page Count: 40

Publisher: McElderry

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL SCIENCES | CHILDREN'S POETRY

- BOOK REVIEW
VOICES OF THE TROJAN WAR
by Kate Hovey & illustrated by Leonid Gore

- BOOK REVIEW
ARACHNE SPEAKS
by Kate Hovey & illustrated by Blair Drawson

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TRICKSTER AND THE FAINTING BIRDS

by Howard Norman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1999

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Norman (The Girl Who Dreamed Only Geese, 1997) presents seven trickster tales collected from living Algonquian storytellers, collated from multiple versions and backed up by specific source notes. That said, the scholarship is unobtrusive, and readers will have no trouble following Trickster from one pickle to the next. They may be puzzled at times—in the first story a meeting with a man/bear-hermit persuades Trickster, for some reason, to stop boasting that he’s “best at being alone”—but they’ll also laugh when Fox is bamboozled out of all but the feet of a brace of ducks, or when Trickster is tricked out in a coat of moldy fish heads in one tale, and a weasel’s tail in another. The lines of text are varied in length to evoke the cadences of live telling, and Pohrt’s human and animal figures are depicted with expressive, fine-lined realism. An inviting, inarguably authentic collection. (Folklore. 8-12)