What follows is a booktalk for a title on our Mock Printz shortlist. We hope you’ll be able to join us at the event where our winner will be chosen! This booktalk was written by Sonja Somerville of Salem Public Library.
So, sometimes people these days do freaky things and we think, “Wow … not like in the good old days.” But let me tell you something: freaky isn’t new, and the ancient Greeks have a lot of stories to prove it. Take the Minotaur for example. David Elliott did, and he wrote a fast, freaky book called Bull that tells a crazy, long-ago story from the Island of Crete about a murdering half-bull, half-man trapped in a labyrinth (a fancy word for a maze) underground.
The book is in verse, with each person telling their part of the story in a different style of poetry. You hear from Poseidon, the god of the sea, who really wants to mess with King Minos of Crete. You hear from King Minos, who gets pretty mad when his wife … uh … mates with a magical bull and births a baby with the head of a bull and the body of a man. And you hear from that baby, named Asterion, as he gets trapped in a maze and the crazy takes over in the darkness. David Elliott has added some of his own ideas to an old, old story. Now, it’s something fresh and new and super-freaky.
Share this:
