Customer Reviews

Persephone

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The illustrations alone give the book 5 stars. They're beautiful and detailed, lush and filled with color. Heck, the pictures were more interesting than the story... though with the sparseness of the story, just almost any artist could have told a better story with illustrations.

The story itself is lacking, which brings the rating down to a 3. Many parts of the myth have been cut out, and the characters are portrayed as very simplistic. I know this is supposed to be a children's book, but there was no feeling to the words. The story was much better illustrated in the artwork, but the postscript/trivia at the back of the book made for a nice touch.

The original purpose of the Persephone story was to explain in a mythological context the continous cycle of birth, death and rebirth. This explanation may have worked well in a pre-modern agrarian society but today even my six year old daughter has a basic scientific understanding of the seasons and the role they play in agriculture. So why should we bother to read this story today? First, the story of Persephone gives us a glimpse back into time. We see how the ancients understood and explained natural phenomona. More importantly, it is important to give young children the opportunity to see the world through a mythological perspective. Yes, we live in a physical world that can be explained scientifically. Nevertheless, we also live in a world that can be understood in a philosophical and spiritual way. Sally Pomme Clayton's "Persephone" does a great job of retelling this ancient story and her wonderful illustrations add an additional level of enjoyment to the book. Highly recommended.

The artwork beautifully shows contrast between and unity of light and darkness, surface and underworld, life and death, happiness and grief.

Featuring sweeping and beautiful color illustrations, Persephone is a picutrebook retelling of the classic myth of Persephone, daughter of the harvest goddess Demeter. When Hades, King of the Underworld, crossed paths with Persephone, he found her so beautiful that he kidnaped her and took her to his Underworld kingdom. Demeter grieved over the loss of her daughter, and the earth turned ice cold and barren of food. To save Demeter's breaking heart and stop famine from destroying the land, Hermes traveled to Hades and persuaded him to let Persephone go - but not before she had eaten three pomegranate seeds. Thus, Persephone must return to the Underworld for three months each year; during this time, Demeter grieves, the snows come, and food grows scarce. A two-page postscript about the story remarks on how the pomegranate is perceived as connected to both death and life in Greek culture today. An excellent and enthusiastically recommended rendition, highly recommended especially for public library children's collections.

I am a read-aloud mom with a family of boys, and I have been reading them fairy tales, fables, legends and myths this year. With older boys, it takes more to keep their attention. This book is a good one - it's fun to let them figure out on their own that this is a story from ancient times meant to explain the cycle of the seasons. It has also inspired a minor pomegranate juice craze around here!

Excellent illustrations show the story - the underworld is exciting and full of stalactites. The sweep of Demeter's cloak brings winter to the earth. Hermes' flight is traced out behind him. Greek style clothing, accessories, and hairstyles. Hades' chariot plunges into the underworld.

My daughter's name is Persephone and this was a fantastic book for her. She loves to hear the story from Greek mythology but this expanded version really brings it to life for her with the pictures and plot.

Persephone is the "goddess" who is dragged to the underworld - kidnapped actually - by Hades, it is symbolic of rape, war and abduction - a really negative myth to sell young girls. They actually try to sell these myths and then "help" you live them out. Kids have been tortured and killed like in Jonestown and many abuses behind the scenes. We are living in an assault culture where violence, cruelty and death are worshipped as divine. The Christians and cannibalism, human sacrifice, child sacrifice and torture. Which is played out in real life. You are probably not connected to the emotional or experiential reality of what it means for these babies to be tortured. Children think it's a glorious story, but know nothing of agony or pain and what it means to be sacrificed to greedy unscrupulous people. Our myths are evil and it is rotten to not be careful about these terribly cruel stories, which if you're not trained can turn into a disaster - many people do try to make real - because some people take them seriously. For instance, Christians are literally trying to take liberty from young women because of a crappy bible passage, some rituals really hurt their kids or women and good and innocent people. Some celebrate war and death and extreme forms of torture. We are an evil species, predators really, cruel, stupid and unloving. We don't have to be, but we are choosing it. I think we should regulate religion, take away it's ability to harm our kids and our loved ones. But we love the freedom to be cruel and cannot bring ourselves to give it up. Why aren't women's myths about real abundance, security, love, victory, the excitement of being free and powerful, instead of defeated and abused? It's because they don't want us to be free, especially free from abuse, which they profit from.

Having said that, the artwork is beautiful and if your'e a smart cookie and have been victimized, seeing the divine in yourself and your ability to survive is good. However be careful to talk with your kids and not to celebrate abuse as the cause of abundance, which is something this myth sometimes tries to promote - because it is not. You can be strong and abundant without enduring abuse and in fact - that is the best kind of strength, you can find in many world myths - escaping from evil rather than enduring it. The strength our patriarchal culture always wants us to have is the lowest form - that to endure their cruelty. Not divine, lousy and weak and we feed their selfishness and cruelty.

Greek and Roman myths after being rewritten with assaulters and abusers as gods, is, like Christianity, extremely sexist. Although it is better than Christianity because of female divine images, it is still sexist. Zeus was a sexual assaulter and other "gods" who have been written over and added on as propaganda (probably from their original better form) into being bad and cruel.... Athena instead of being born to Metis, was born out of Zeus's head, making her myth - originally one of female power into power owned by an evil, abusive male with horrific sexist abuses of women written in.

Taking back these myths are reworking them for the modern age would be great. Artemis, always the protector of animals could hunt with nets and control populations with birth control, with the help of Athena, Goddess of civilization and invention. Persephone's myth could be re-written from it's cruel form to a young divine who is rescued by her Mother from abuse and harm. who takes control of the situation and gets justice for herself. A positive spin on this myth, which is still there even beneath the negative images of loss and abuse. In some ways in can be interpreted better in this form, though the Goddesses seem powerless at times, the Mother Demeter gets her daughter back. Still not a great victory, for she has to go back every winter.

In many ways we have to interpret myths through our own creative power, because the originals are almost always negative in some ways. Though they can be rewritten for evil as in the addition of Zeus, they can also be rewritten for good. Perhaps in their original forms, before the addition of Zeus, they are better and can be worked with to promote higher ideals. Summation - Great art, but questionable myths to give to your daughters. Just because myths are diverse and pagan does not mean they're not sexist, although they are better than CHristianity, they definitely have some twists and turns and traps for those seeking to protect their children.