Theseus and the Minotaur by Yvan Pommaux

Theme(s): Love, jealousy, greed, family, strength, democracy Illustrator: Yvan Pommaux, with digital coloring by Nicole Pommaux It distracted heavily from the flow of reading, imho. This ends up creating sentences with multiple asterixis and clusters of tiny phonetic dictionary pronunciations at the bottom of almost every page. Every time a new proper noun is introduced it is marked with an asterix and footnoted with a pronunciation guide. Also, since this is a Greek myth there are obviously a lot of strange Greek names that no child will know how to pronounce properly and the editorial decision here was an awkward one. There are only a few places, mostly nearing the end, where the speech bubbles actually take over in telling the story. It is a large, picture book size and the story is mostly told in the narrative with illustrated frames and text bubbles which simply reaffirm what has already been told in the text. However I found the book an uncomfortable read, especially one labeled a graphic novel and wonder how appealing it actually is to kids.

As a great reader of the Greek myths I appreciate all this in good children's retellings. For example the story of how the Minotaur is born of a bull and human. It also doesn't skip over the adult themes often found in Greek mythology but manages to allude to them while keeping the book age appropriate. The story is true to the original myth, including even little details such as briefly mentioning leaving Ariadne on an island. It amazingly captures the ancient Greek style to perfection. For the first time I'm not terribly impressed with a TOON book.

Theseus and the Minotaur by Yvan Pommaux