Theseus and the Minotaur

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Hutton's distinguishing artistic strengths--a skillful hand at rendering and juxtaposing luminescence and shadow--are clearly evident in the delicate but dramatic watercolor paintings that illustrate this classic Greek myth. And yet, despite many striking individual scenes, the work as a whole is less satisfying and resonant than Hutton's strongest books (especially his masterful interpretations of biblical lore). His version of Theseus's journey across the water and through the Cretan Labyrinth, and home again by sea, seems to wander in search of an emotional and dramatic center: even the pivotal confrontation between the title characters has little narrative or visual force. And the intricacies of the maze do not, as shown, fully capture the imagination. Ages 6-10. (Sept.)

School Library Journal

Gr 2-5-- Hutton has made his name interpreting biblical and fairy-tale classics in watercolors of unforgettable beauty and imaginative intelligence. In Theseus his mastery is undimmed. His palette here leans toward bricky Cretan reds, sunny gold, and a winy blue for the sea, its waves limned with scrawls resembling linear B. The details are vivid: from Minoan palace architecture, with its distinctive ``upside-down'' columns, to Theseus' hook-prowed, square-sailed, green-trussed ship, even to the hero's leaf-blade dagger with its elegant haft. In a style encompassing both tender lyricism and expressive eloquence, a plausible mythic past is evoked. For all the glory of the illustrations, this past is undeniably sombre: Ariadne is abandoned, Aegeus dies, Theseus is a flawed hero. Although Leonard Everett Fisher's Theseus and the Minotaur (Holiday, 1988) tells more of Theseus' story, both text and illustrations lack the poetry and imaginative verve of Hutton's version. Hutton's text here is longer than in his biblical adaptations, and the narrative less noble: cruelty, thoughtlessness, lust, and revenge underlie the plot. This is, however, a magnificent introduction to the all-too-human world of the great myths constructed, as is Theseus, around the sparkling Aegean. --Patricia Dooley, University of Washington, Seattle

School Library Journal

Gr 2-5-The drama of Theseus's sorrowful hero's return to Athens is given full force in Hutton's fabulous retelling of the Greek myth. A prodigious interplay of sea, sun, sky, and shadow creates the backdrop for this lustrous version of human fallibility and godly interference. (Oct. 1989)