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|---|---|---|
Searching... Salem Main Library | J 398.2 McCaughrean 2003 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
This is one of the oldest stories in the world, and it's about things that still matter to us today: friendship, fame, courage, happiness.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu are friends -- best friends. Together they can work wonders, fight monsters, brave earthquakes, travel the world! But waiting in the dark is the one enemy they can never overcome.
Retold by award-winning author Geraldine McCaughrean, and illustrated with great power by David Parkins, Gilgamesh the Hero is a story that will linger in the imagination long after the book has been put down.
Author Notes
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.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-9-In this evocative retelling of the oldest recorded epic, McCaughrean delivers primordial themes to a modern audience. Arresting images and potent storytelling make this an impressive presentation. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Geraldine McCaughrean retells the oldest recorded story, adapted for children, in Gilgamesh the Hero, illus. by David Parkins. The great king Gilgamesh fights Huwawa, Guardian of the Cedar Forests, slays the Bull of Heaven, seeks the secret of immortality and travels the world in this dramatic story of a powerful ruler who is both loved and hated by his people. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) Five thousand or so years ago, Gilgamesh was probably the real king of Uruk, in what is now Iraq. Some two thousand years later, the considerably embellished Epic of Gilgamesh was carved onto twelve stone tablets. Found shattered, they were painstakingly pieced together again by modern-day archaeologists. In the present version, a ""free adaptation from a variety of translations,"" the mythic strongman, whose unrestrained vigor in building his city makes him more tyrant than hero, battles with Enkidu, a ""wild man"" who signifies the natural, uncivilized world. The two become friends and join in heroic adventures. When Enkidu dies, the distraught Gilgamesh quests for immortality, seeking his friend in the underworld and crossing the River of Death to find the immortal Utnapishtim (Noah). There are fascinating echoes of stories from many traditions in this venerable root story, including the Greek underworld and a transformative time of wandering in the wilderness. The author enlivens it with colorfully informal language (""...as for marrying you,"" says Gilgamesh to the notoriously fickle goddess Ishtar, ""Not for all the honey in the hive, lady""). She also shapes a theme that's somewhat different from Ludmila Zeman's fine three-picture-book version: whereas Zeman's Gilgamesh finds immortality in the great city he builds and in his own story, McCaughrean's fathers a son--an outcome the author has built toward from the beginning. This Gilgamesh grows beyond ""heroic violence"" into a man who, like Utnapishtim, most values ""a wife, contentment, memories, peace""; one whose life is summed up with a concluding paraphrase from Isaiah: ""He walked through darkness and so glimpsed the light."" It's clearly a telling for our time, but one that honors its source. Parkins captures the epic's primitive power and universal emotions in rough, broadly rendered portraits: Gilgamesh as a pillar of pure rage or a mound of despair; other illustrations skillfully recall the sculpture of the ancient Assyrians. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
McCaughrean turns in a robust, exciting rendition of the world's oldest written epic. After many astounding feats, proud, powerful king Gilgamesh sees his beloved sidekick Enkidu die, and becomes terrified of doing the same. Abandoning self-respect, he searches the world for the secret of immortality, crosses the Waters of Death to hear the tale of undying Utnapisthim (better knows as Noah), and at last returns home, to make wiser bids for immortality by telling his tale, and raising children. Thanks to the former, as McCaughrean points out, he's better known today than Ishtar, Enlil, or any of the other "immortal" gods he fought and worshiped. Enhanced by Parkins's expressionistic tableaus of gnarled, dramatically posed figures, she relates his adventures with gusto--"Gilgamesh calmly strung his bow. 'Don't launch the funeral barge yet. What can go wrong with the two of us side by side?' 'Do you really want me to tell you?' said Enkidu"--while vividly capturing his pride, soul-deep anguish, and the personal cost of his hard-won wisdom. The most riveting retelling yet of this ancient, ageless tale. (introductory note) (Folktale. 10-14) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 6-9. McCaughrean employs her supple style in this version of the oldest recorded story in the world. Gilgamesh was a real king around 3000 B.C.E. in the Sumerian city of Uruk (now in Iraq). This tale, originally engraved on 12 stone tablets whose thousands of pieces are still studied and puzzled over, is rendered with simplicity and power. Gilgamesh finds a kindred spirit in Enkidu, the wild man, and the two of them together conquer the guardian of the forest and the bull of heaven. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh overwhelmed with the loss and terror of his own dying, goes on a long quest to find the secret of everlasting life, undergoing many trials and learning lessons. He hears the story of the flood--not much different from the biblical version. Siduri the innkeeper tells Gilgamesh the joys of life: Children. That's the shape of happiness . . . Cherries in bed . . . Someone to sit with in the shade. Parkins' muscular images, inspired by Assyrian art and reminiscent of Leonard Fisher's art, are a fine foil for the text, which begs to be read aloud. --GraceAnne DeCandido Copyright 2003 Booklist
Table of Contents
| 1 Heaven Sent | p. 4 |
| 2 Tamed by a Kiss | p. 12 |
| 3 Do or Die | p. 20 |
| 4 Marry Me | p. 31 |
| 5 Death | p. 42 |
| 6 Afraid of Nothing | p. 48 |
| 7 Give Up | p. 57 |
| 8 Faraway | p. 67 |
| 9 The Bread of Sorrow | p. 77 |
| 10 The Plant of Life | p. 83 |
| 11 Home | p. 88 |
| 12 The Twelfth Tablet | p. 92 |