The Tale of Troy (Puffin Classics)

The Iliad and Odyssey were written around 2,700 years ago. At that time they were not written down but memorized! With the Iliad having over 15,000 lines and the Odyssey over 12,000 there are not many of us, yes even us adults, who would want to read all that let alone memorize it!This rendition by Roger which includes both stories from the Iliad and Odyssey was originally penned by him in 1958. It is brilliant! I read this aloud to our children as we have been studying Ancient Greece these past two weeks so felt this would be a good book to include in our study and I am SO glad we did. They loved it and I learned a lot also so we are all a little more educated now!There are a few sketches/drawings scattered throughout the book but I am not sure what they really added. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

The Tale of Troy by Roger Lancelyn Green is a refreshingly cracking retelling of Trojan War as though to be seen from a magical casement to the misty antiquity, which the father of western narrative history Herodotus defines as the Heroic Age of the Five Ages of Man (which, by the way, Ovid interestingly omitted in his Roman version of the Ages of Men) when divine immortals responded to your pleas directly and promptly and freely made love with their beautiful mortal subjects with unquelled divine lust.Drawn on a compendium of classical narratives of ancient writers, principally Homer’s Iliad, Green retells the beginning and end of Trojan War, reprises the scenes of the heroic characters and capricious Immortals, and remasters the thematic theater of dramas so appealing to our contemporary minds that the story collapses a great divide of realms of heaven and earth, of the ancient and the modern, with his genius story-telling skills as an erudite but affable raconteur. Green takes you to the farthest possible to the Christ-like titan Prometheus punished for his divine compassion for mankind to the wedding banquet of Menelaus and Helen in Sparta where the goddess of discord Eris first presented an apple of discord, to Paris of Troy happily living with Oenone, a mountain nymph, on Mount Ida, to the Greek Camp outside the Wall of Troy where Agamemnon and Achilles were having a row over their beautiful Trojan female captives, and to Odysseus’s proverbial 10-year journey back to his Ithaca. Then the tale of Troy regenerates more stories about the fates of the characters following the end of the epic war, which leads to the dawn of the Iron Age, the Age of Man, where history as what we are textually familiar with, which is still ongoing like Odysseus’s journey to the destined purpose.The Tale of Troy, which is as a matter of fact focused on the last few weeks in the final year of the war, is a literary equivalent of Matryoshka, a frame story embedded in manifold stories that surprise you with a jolly expectation of ‘what next?” Thus, it has no occasion for boredom as a result of the pedantic display of archeological artifices, ostentatious authority of scholastic knowledge usually associated with classical texts. That said, you should not make a rash judgment to regard this book as an abridged version of the great classical literature to be found in the aisle of Children’s book section in booksellers. Instead, it is Green’s altruistic intention to propagate the legacy of Mankind and cherish it as a great cultural endowment to the posterity of the forefathers of human enterprise by sharing his erudition of the Classical in universally comprehensive language with extraordinary vividness and superb narrative skills.The great Roman poet Horace once said it’s harder to treat a story in your own way. In fact, to retell a story is harder than to create one from void because it requires a special ability with the aid of natural wit to make the original source texts adapt to the contemporary readership of the time the author belongs to. To that effect, this book is a magical casement of the misty past told by a Homeric storyteller of our modern time who will take you to where the ancient ocean sends forth the breeze of the shrill Aegean Sun to let you sail an imaginary voyage with the Greek Kings and the Trojan refugees, while the Olympian gods are watching you from Mount Olympus.

Got this as an add on item. It turned out to be a great choice. A very well written and easy to read book. Great for children and adults. Stories of ancient Greece originally written in 1958. If you like action and Greek Mythology you'll enjoy this book.

I am using this book with an advanced ESL learner in middle school in Taiwan. He has really been enjoying it. We use PowerPoints with art work based on the stories in the collection and respond with quizzes (some by me, some by him), art (including maps), connections, research, and vocabulary. He loves using the Kindle version, which links to his Chinese dictionary. The use of Elizabethan pronouns (thee, thou, etc.) has not gotten in the way. Once it is explained, it's no problem and adds to the "feel" of an ancient work. I have enjoyed reading this version as well and have purchased it for two fifth-graders here in the U.S. as well. I will definitely look at other classics translated by Roger Lancelyn Green!

This is a good book for kids (like my son) who love action and adventure stories. It is wonderfully adapted for a younger audience by Roger Lancelyn Green, and gives kids a good basic understanding of the ancient myths that so influence modern cartoons in terms of good and evil.

I rate this 5 stars because of it take that gets you very interested in the book.I If you are a fan of Greek mythology read this book.

This is precisely the kind of classical adaptation that turns kids off. It's not as bad as some, but as a Classicist myself, I fail to see why Odysseus and Achilles have to sound like Victorian twits. Then again, it is one of a very few versions of Homer's stories that are accessible to younger readers.

My girlfriend's kid loves having Green's stories read to him at night. And it's a welcome respite for adults from the idiocy of most of what passes for children's fiction these days.