This book is kind of like the nursery rhyme “Little Bo Peep”, if Bo Peep were a one-eyed giant and the sheep weren’t lost—they were living their best lives in New York City. Cyclops loves his sheep dearly, and he does his best to protect them from the dangers that he sees in the outside world. However, the sheep know that there’s more to life than the safety of their cave, and when one of them sneaks out, Cyclops must brave the perils of the big city to find him. There’s so much joy in watching Cyclops put up “Lost Sheep” posters in Times Square and the sheep ride the subway. In the end, Cyclops finds his lost sheep and realizes that there’s plenty of fun things to do in the Big Apple, especially if you can share them with your family. There isn’t a lot of the Odyssey’s monstrous Polyphemus in this story, but the roots are there. Cyclops of Central Park takes the basic premise of the lonely, antisocial Cyclops (and his sheep), then suggests that they all could have lived happily ever after if he had just given the world a chance. It’s a unique, heartwarming spin on one of humanity’s oldest stories.  – Krishni Burns

I read Cyclops of Central Park, and the book is about a monster, and he lives in Central Park, and his home is a cave, and it’s his safe place. Sometimes you go out in the world, and you don’t feel that safe when you’re a little small, and you don’t know a lot of all that’s around, and like everything you do that’s new is adding to your stress level, but then you’ve just got to breathe, like close your eyes and think about home or a safe place where you have love and happiness and excitement, and when it’s over you feel like you want to do it one million more times. It was so fun because you did a new thing, and you didn’t know it was going to be that fun.

I recommend this book for everyone! There doesn’t have to be an age limit or a height limit for everything. You know what this book reminded me of? Scaredy Squirrel and Love Monster. – Cora (age 7)

* For further information on the Our Mythical Childhood Survey, please refer to the website of the project “Our Mythical Childhood” [link: http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/], led by Prof. Katarzyna Marciniak at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales,” University of Warsaw, Poland, with the participation of Bar Ilan University, University of New England, University of Roehampton, University of Yaoundé 1, and other affiliated scholars, within the funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement No 681202).