Hutton, W. (1994). Persephone. Illus. Warwick Hutton. New York, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
Brief Annotation: This book tells the Greek myth about how seasons happened. Hades, the God of the underworld, kidnapped Persephone to be his wife. When Persephone was in the underworld her mother was desperately looking for her and after days of no results, she went to Zeus, the chief of all gods for help. Zeus sent a messenger to Hades to tell him to bring Persephone back as long as she didn’t eat anything. While is such despair, Persephone absentmindedly ate six seeds from a pomegranate when she was with Hades. Zeus came up with the compromise that Persephone would spend six months with Hades then six months with her mother because of the six seeds she ate.
Genre: Myth
Grade Level: 3-5
Readers who will like this: Children who want to learn about mythology and about how the Greeks came up with the change of seasons.
Response/Rating (1-4): *** I liked how this book depicted the Greek mythology of how the seasons are formed. The illustrations I didn’t like as much, but they coincided with Greek mythology pictures.
One question you would ask before a read aloud: How do you think seasons are formed? Do you think people think seasons are formed in a different way?
When I saw you'd documented this book, I was thinking how much I liked the illustrations, but I see you have a different opinion! No problem. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I need to remind you, though, to add the name of the artist in the bibliographic information at the beginning of each blog post.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you approach the question to ask before reading. If you were looking at different cultures, your question would be a good one in many forms to get at how religion used to serve as the only place for getting answers about the world around us.
If you like mythology, check out Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series. The first is called The Lightening Thief.