The Odyssey

Front Cover
Oxford University Press, 1996 - Juvenile Fiction - 96 pages
Odysseus turned his eyes from the still-smoking ruins of Troy and thought of home. But the journey would be long to the three-island kingdom of Ithaca, and there would be many dangers to overcome--the Lotus-eaters and the cloying nectar of their deadly fruit; the hungry one-eyed giant Polyphemus; the stormy wrath of the vengeful sea-god Poseidon; Circe, the beautiful sorceress who turned men into pigs; the terrors of the whirlpool Charybdis and the six-headed sea monster, Scylla; and the descent to the kingdom of Hades, god of the dead--until bright morning he arrived back, alone and exhausted, to face the hundred fierce suitors of his faithful wife, Penelope.
In this retelling, Geraldine McCaughrean's lively and original style is complemented by Victor Ambrus's brilliant recreations of the ancient world and its monsters and gods. Young people will enjoy the fast-paced and contemporary text, gain an introduction to Homer's classic story, and gain a foundation for further studies in history and literature that will serve them well into their adult lives.

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About the author (1996)

Geraldine McCaughrean was born in Enfield, England on June 6, 1951. She was educated at Christ Church College, Canterbury. She has written more than 160 books and plays for children and adults. Her writing career includes the retelling of such classics as One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, The Canterbury Tales, and The Bronze Cauldron: Myths and Legends of the World, which is a collection of stories from all over the world. She has received numerous awards including three Whitbread Children's Book Awards for A Little Lower Than the Angels, Gold Dust, and Not the End of the World. She also received the Guardian Prize and Carnegie Medal for A Pack of Lies, the Beefeater Children's Novel Award for Gold Dawn, the Michael L. Printz Award for The White Darkness, and the 2018 Carnegie Medal for children's and YA books for her middle-grade novel Where the World Ends.

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