Gwendolyn E. Reed

This version of Creation compresses the first and second chapters of Genesis by omitting the first time Adam is created male and female at the same time.
Once Eve is created, "Adam and Eve lived joyously. But they did not know it, for they did not know what sorrow or suffering were. They did not know what evil was."
When they eat the forbidden fruit, "At first the fruit was sweet on their lips. Soon its sweetness turned to the bitter taste of dust and death. Their eyes were opened. They knew they had done evil in disobeying God. They knew shame. . . ."
There is a full description of their lives after leaving Eden. The book ends: "Together they lived working by day and weary at night, doomed to die. As God commanded them they were fruitful and had children. When they had reached a great age they died and they were buried in the earth they had worked, in that same earth from which God had made Adam.
"Their sons and daughters spread over the land, working the earth and subduing the wilderness. . . . Always on their lips was the taste of the forbidden fruit. As well as joy they knew sorrow. In their lives they knew both good and evil."
Not a terribly uplifting ending for a children's book, but the original narrative is also a downer: it ends with Adam and Eve leaving Eden and is immediately followed by the Cain and Abel story.
The illustrations are woodcuts, some of them illustrated orange, yellow and brown. The beginning of creation shows an outstretched hand over the "watery waste." Adam and Eve are naked, with strategically placed animals and plants.… (mehr)