If you think Shakespeare is difficult to read, you should try something a little farther back. Beowulf is a story about a monster, a warrior, and a kingdom in jeopardy. The monster, Grendel, has terrorized the Danish kingdom, ruled by Hrothgar, for years. At night, he roams the land killing whoever crosses his path and when food is in short supply, he demolishes the king’s high hall, dragging people back to his lair. Grendel’s reputation stretches throughout the world, and the intrigued warrior, Beowulf, sails to Denmark on a quest to kill the monster.

Beowulf is the first known written work in English. Considered part of the Anglo-Saxon time period in Great Britain, it was written between the fifth and eleventh centuries. The text is old English, predating Shakespeare’s “thee’s” and “thou’s,” what is considered modern English, by five hundred to one thousand years. One manuscript remains, and it has survived not just one thousand plus years, but also the destruction of religious and religious-type artifacts by King Henry VIII during the English monarchy’s separation from the Catholic Church, and the fire that destroyed Sir Robert Bruce Cotton’s library in 1731.

To celebrate such a powerful story, both intrinsically and physically, it has been adapted from epic poem to graphic novel. Stefan Petrucha, author of Wicked Dead and Teen, Inc. and Kody Chamberlain, illustrator of 30 Days of Night: Bloodsucker Tales have collaborated to bring Beowulf to the twenty first century. It has been revised to a graphic novel version fitting a middle school age reading capability. It is 96 pages long, comes in paperback form and was published by HarperTrophy.

Beowulf is now on sale and you can find out more information by going to Petrucha’s website.