BEOWULF: A HERO'S TALE RETOLD, written and illustrated by James Rumford, Houghton-Mifflin, $17, ages 10 and up

The hero poem "Beowulf," first written down in about 800 A.D. in Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is really three separate stories, retold here in brief, powerful prose, using only words that can be traced back to the ancient language.

The first story is of the ogre Grendel, who terrorizes the Danes and their king Hrothgar for a dozen years. Beowulf, from the Land of Geats, swears an oath to help the Danish king and rid the Danes of the evil monster.

"When sleep was at its deepest, night at its blackest, up from the mist-filled marsh came Grendel stalking," writes author and illustrator James Rumford.

Having sailed to Denmark with 14 friends, Beowulf and his group lie in wait for Grendel. They fight Grendel furiously, but only Beowulf is mighty enough to tear away the ogre's arm.

Grendel's mother is the focus of the second story.

"Grendel was dead. It is true, but the ogre had a mother more evil than he," writes Rumford. Beowulf must now eliminate Grendel's mother, "She-who-brought-evil-into-this-world."

In the final story, Beowulf, now quite old and frail, takes on the dragon.

The book's elegant design breaks each of the three stories into a background with its own color, shades of green for the first, blues for the middle and golden yellows for the last.

Fine pen-and-ink drawings in a wash of green tint evoke a cold, ancient setting. "I wanted it to be a little jarring," Rumford says.

Brief glimpses of the dragon begin to lurk from the title page. The foreboding creature hints at impending doom as it winds its way behind the text through each page, until finally the entire dragon is revealed, jumping from the background to center stage to overtake the aging hero.

Rumford also uses a raven to artistically interpret this complex poem that is not what it appears to be.

"Once I put this dragon in here, I decided I needed another element," Rumford says. "The raven is the raven and the wolf."

The reader needs to look closely in these final pages to see the raven that is also a wolf, for it is an optical puzzle in the Escher style, based on the Dutch graphic artist's use of visual illusion.

As the third story unfolds, we get more ravens that are wolves together, until the line, "A woman came forward singing a sorrow-song — of the foes who would come upon them like ravens, like wolves, now that Beowulf was gone."

Rumford's depictions are not at all graphic, and even in the most violent scenes, much is left to the imagination.

While a note on the back cover recommends the book for the "strong-hearted and up," I feel that it is best suited to children 10 and older.

But anyone attempting to study the poem now should consider throwing away their Cliffs Notes and diving into this work instead.

Rumford should be considered a hero for taking this seemingly impenetrable poem and stripping it to its essence. The dragon has been slain.