Time for Flowers, Time for Snow: A Retelling of the Legend of Persephone and Demeter

The CD that accompanies this book is not just an audio readaloud, but an operetta-scale work whose 25 light classical-style songs are performed by dozens of singers and instrumentalists. The book, meanwhile, offers the spoken text and song lyrics along with Béha’s (City Kids) illustrations, whose flat, stylized Greek gods, painted in stained-glass blues and ochres, recall Chagall’s. The myth of Hades’s theft of Persephone explains the death of fertility in winter; Huser (Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen) turns it into a Taming of the Shrew–style romance. At first, Persephone scorns the blandishments of Hades. “How do you court a captive bird?” Hades wonders in one song. “A shining gem, to pin to your clothes?” “You can shove it, Hades, right up your nose,” Persephone snaps. But as time passes, she falls for Hades: “I go with you most willingly,” she murmurs at last, in an unsettling picture of female submission to machismo. The project’s production values are of a high standard, but there’s a whiff of “Read this, it’s good for you” that some of its intended audience may find off-putting. Ages 5–11. (Nov.)