PERSEPHONE

Once again, Hutton offers a simple but serviceable adaptation and accompanies it with watercolors of unique power and delicacy. His forms and compositions are even more spare and hieratical here; the figures of dark-robed Hades and Ceres, flanking the young girl, have a similarity of shape suggesting their parallel roles as Persephone's guardians, while the airy summer and the underworld and winter desolation that succeed it are made less of substance than of shadow and light. Format here is more harmonious than in some of Hutton's earlier books: the text is always comfortably accommodated; most spreads feature a single illustration, while the exceptions are well balanced visually. Interestingly, Hutton gives the story a new slant by opening with the lonely Hades's point of view. A worthy introduction to an oft-told tale. (Mythology/Picture book. 6-10)