LEGENDS: BATTLES AND QUESTS

Mining his backlist, Horowitz offers six traditional tales from the Kingfisher Book of Myths and Legends (U.K. edition 1985, no previous U.S. edition), revised and repackaged in the first of a projected half-dozen volumes. Going straight for the gusto, he opens with the story of Theseus and the Minotaur (“I want to be more than your friend,” purrs Ariadne, arming the hero for his battle with the horned monster), then follows with the suicide dive required to cast “The Great Bell of Peking” [sic], the blood-soaked legend of Romulus and Remus, an Amazonian tale so violent that the author opens with an apology, an Incan story that ends with a child sacrifice and finally, in a break from the gore, the tale of Sir Gawain and “The Ugly Wife.” Comics-style spot art, panels and insets featuring fearsome creatures and muscular heroes in (often scanty) period costume add further notes of melodrama to nearly every spread. The simultaneously published Legends: Beasts and Monsters (ISBN: 978-0-7534-1936-6) dishes up an even less palatable buffet. (Folktales. 10-13)