 Front cover of first edition | |
| Author | Rosemary Sutcliff |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Alan Lee |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's novel,supernatural fiction, Greek mythology |
| Publisher | Frances Lincoln |
Publication date | 1993 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 128 pp[1] |
| ISBN | 978-0-7112-0778-3 |
| OCLC | 59341355 |
| 883/.01 | |
| LC Class | BL793.T7 S88 1993[2] |
| Followed by | The Wanderings of Odysseus |
Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of the Iliad is a novel for children written byRosemary Sutcliff, illustrated byAlan Lee, and published (posthumously) byFrances Lincoln in 1993. Partly based on theIliad, the book retells the story of theTrojan War, from the birth ofParis to the building of theTrojan Horse. For his part Lee won the annualKate Greenaway Medal from theLibrary Association, recognizing the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject.[3]
When Menelaus returned from hunting and found his queen fled with the Trojan prince, the black grief and the red rage came upon him, and he sent word of the wrong done to him and a furious call for aid to his brother, black-bearded Agamemnon, who was High King over all the other kings of Greece.
Kirkus Reviews noted the "compelling vision and sensitivity to language, history, and heroics" that she brought to retelling bothArthurian legends and the Homericepic.[4]The Reading Teacher remarked that the book's division into 19 chapters makes it a good text to spread out over multiple readings, and praised Sutcliff's "graceful, powerful language".[5] Sutcliff's prose is praised also inBooks to Build On, a collection of teaching resources edited byE. D. Hirsch, Jr.[6] ACommon Core handbook suggests it for grades 6–8.[7]
Delacorte Press reprintedBlack Ships in the US within the calendar year (October 1993;ISBN 978-0-385-31069-7).[2][4]
Sutcliff's retelling of Homer'sOdyssey story was also illustrated by Alan Lee and published by Frances Lincoln in a companion edition,The Wanderings of Odysseus: The story of the Odyssey (1995,ISBN 978-0-7112-0862-9).[8]
Kirkus praised both Sutcliff's text, for preserving "a certain formality of language" and for graceful "winnowing", and Lee's "spectacular paintings": "Beautiful and detailed ... the pictures are obviously the result of careful research and reward close scrutiny. A gorgeous book, more than worthy of its predecessor." It suggested the book for ages 10 and up.[9][10]
