Odysseus gets the monsters. Penelope gets the loom. It is easy to mistake that arrangement for a division between adventure and waiting.
Homer gives us a more interesting story.
In Book Two of the Odyssey, Penelope’s suitors describe the way she delayed choosing a husband. She said she needed to finish a burial shroud for Laertes, Odysseus’s father. By day she worked at the loom. At night she undid the weaving. The task could appear to advance while its completion kept moving away.
It was a strategy built from the materials available to her: skill, expectation and time. Eventually it was exposed. Before that, it bought her room to resist the demand being placed upon her.
That episode offers a useful question for anyone returning to the Odyssey: whose intelligence do we notice first?
Spectacular adventures make themselves easy to remember. A person managing pressure inside a household requires a different kind of attention. Ask a young reader which situation they find more difficult and the answer may surprise you. The conversation can move from strength to patience, from having choices to finding a way to preserve them.
This is one pleasure of meeting a long story through shorter adventures and then exploring beyond them. A familiar name can lead to another character, another scene, another way of understanding what courage might involve.
The Adventures of Odysseus offers children an illustrated introduction to the hero’s journey. Alongside it, an adult can bring questions from the wider poem, including this one: what is happening at home while the traveler is away?
Penelope has more to contribute to that answer than the fact that she is waiting.
Begin the journey with The Adventures of Odysseus.
Further reading: Homer’s Odyssey, Book Two, in the Perseus Digital Library. This essay discusses the original poem; it does not claim this episode appears in the children’s adaptation.