Monday, November 8, 2010

Megillat Esther, good, but a little long.

After I read both the Biblical book of Esther and Megillat Esther, by JT Waldman, I discovered there were many differences, even though Megillat Esther is based on the book of Esther from the Bible. One difference, that is obvious, is that Megillat Esther is quite a bit longer than the Biblical Esther. This is because two or so pages takes up two or so verses from the Biblical Esther. There are also Interludes in the graphic novel that are obviously not in the Biblical book. I also felt that the Biblical Esther was straight and to the point, after all it is a short book of the Bible and only takes up ten chapters; while the graphic novel seemed to draw the story out (which is understandable for making ten chapters into a graphic novel, but I thought it was too long, especially with the interludes). I did enjoy the graphic novel, however I personally thought it was too long and it was sometimes hard for me to follow. There were many instances where the illustrations were just mixed around on the page and I was confused on which frame to read first (for example, Prologue ii, v. pages 91-93). I also was not a big fan of having to flip the book over to read halfway through the book. I did, however, enjoy that the book was written in both Hebrew and English. So, overall, I think that the graphic novel was sometimes harder to follow than say reading the Biblical book of Esther. I wonder why JT Waldman decided to make the graphic novel so long? I think the author’s intensions were to show and explain every verse to a T. With that being said, I understand why the graphic novel was so long, but I think it would have been better if JT Waldman would have shortened it up, maybe by getting rid of the unnecessary Interludes?

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