OLD IS NEW AGAIN
Children who thrill to the adventures of wily Odysseus on Homer’s wine-dark sea—his blinding of the Cyclops, his encounters with sorceresses and Lotus-Eaters—usually have to wait until high school to hear how he was occupied before his homeward journey. No more, with Gillian Cross’s excellent retelling of the first Homeric epic in “The Iliad” (Candlewick, 160 pages, $19.99), an arrestingly handsome volume for readers ages 7-14.
Neil Packer’s mesmeric illustrations work here—as they did in his 2012 collaboration with Ms. Cross on “The Odyssey”—to heighten our sense of both the antiquity and immediacy of the Trojan War. That capricious gods would send divine mists or false dreams to affect human battles seems a distant thing; that men fight, sulk and bluster is as true today as it was 3,000 years ago. Commendably, Ms. Cross minimizes the saga’s gore without losing its force, ferocity or emotional power.