Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The classic Arthurian legend is brilliantly recreated by an award-winning author/illustrator team.Of all the tales of the Knights of the Round Table, the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is surely the most magical. Here are thrills and enchantment, chivalry and courage, a challenge and a quest. Its hero is the greatest of all King Arthur's knights, Sir Gawain. His adversary is the fearsome Green Knight, who rides into Camelot one New Year's Eve with a challenge that strikes dread into Arthur's court. For Gawain, it is the start of an extraordinary adventure.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

An award-winning duo teams up for Sir Gawain & the Green Knight. England's children's laureate Michael Morpurgo retells this classic medieval tale with illustrations by Michael Foreman. Morpurgo handles the text with care and gives young readers just enough of the humor and darkness of the original tale without overwhelming them. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

Gr 5-8-Sir Gawain's greatest challenge is a quest of honor as well as courage, with deeper meanings embedded in the fast-moving plot. Morpurgo's sprightly retelling contains equal doses of horror and humor, while Foreman's larger-than-life watercolor and pastel paintings enliven the story in brilliant hues and bloody detail. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Gr. 4-7. In this handsome volume, Morpurgo ably translates one of medieval England's greatest tales from verse into modern prose. When a bold giant, the Green Knight, challenges King Arthur's court to a contest that involves beheading, only one knight, Sir Gawain, steps between his king and the giant's battle-ax. Gawain, Arthur's nephew and one of his most courageous, virtuous, and beloved knights, travels through the wilds of the kingdom, testing his mettle against an ogre, a dragon, and a pack of wolves before he arrives at a castle. There the lord welcomes him like a brother and the lord's lady woos him, making advances that Gawain finds increasingly hard to resist. In the climactic meeting with the Green Knight, Gawain learns that the contest was not a trial of strength but of honor. Morpurgo has not neglected the underpinnings of knightly conduct, courtly love, and Christian virtue that are a vital part of the original, but children will read this story for the adventure--and what an adventure it is! Morpurgo's dramatic telling captures the vitality of the tale as well as its beauty and mystery. Foreman illuminates the book with watercolor-and-pastel illustrations that are true to the story, full of energy, and aglow with colors that are sometimes subdued and sometimes fiery bright. --Carolyn Phelan Copyright 2004 Booklist

Horn Book Review

The gallant Gawain quests to find the Green Knight and keep his promise to fulfill the Green Knight's challenge. This famous Arthurian legend is retold in formal storytelling language and illustrated with vibrant watercolor and pastel paintings. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Book Review

Morpurgo offers a fluid translation of the 14th-century tale. "Chickens, the lot of you. Worse than chickens too," the anything-but-jolly green giant taunts King Arthur's court, before losing his head to Sir Gawain--then riding away with it cradled in his arm. A year and a day later, after surviving exhausting hardships, hard battles, and a comically discomfiting attempted seduction, Gawain presents himself, as he had promised, to be beheaded in turn. He looks a trifle undersized in Foreman's luminous watercolors, which makes his heroism all the more striking as he confronts challenges to his endurance, his knightly prowess, and his stubbornly held honor. In the end, those qualities earn him a new lease on life, though he discovers himself, as Morpurgo writes, "not as honest or true as he would want himself to have been: much like many of us, I think." Several condensed versions of the story are available for young readers, but enhanced by striking art, plus handsome packaging that includes a text in (perfectly legible) green, this full rendition stands apart. (Folktale. 10-13) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.