THE HERO AND THE MINOTAUR

Paired with stylized, full-bleed views of strong-featured figures in classical Greek dress, and generally posed in profile, Byrd retells a melded tale that includes not only Theseus’s birth, early feats and battle with the Minotaur, but also the imprisonment and flight of Daedalus and Icarus. In general, he sticks to the most familiar versions of these tales, though he is selective in his choice of incidents to include. He also casts Icarus and Ariadne as friends, and has Theseus abandon Ariadne at the behest of Dionysus, rather than for the usual—and less defensible—reasons. Children who have difficulty warming to the illustrations in Warwick Hutton’s distant, 1989 rendition may find these scenes of Theseus facing off against a succession of huge, ugly ogres, capped by a climactic dustup with the toothy, fire-breathing Minotaur, suitably rousing—but for a decidedly contrarian view, steer more able readers then to Patrice Kindl’s Lost in the Labyrinth (2002). (Picture book/folktale. 8-10)