Savior Pirotta and Jan Lewis provide 10 myths perfectly adapted for newly independent readers. The text is kid-friendly, and the cartoonish images are colorful and exciting. Take “Jason and the Golden Fleece” for an example. The dragon-teeth men that threaten Jason are replaced with skeletons à la Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts (1963). The bones fly apart when Jason throws his stone, which provides an age-appropriate alternative to the canonical bloodbath and prepares readers for one of cinema’s finest special effects scenes at the same time. Not only that, Medea gets top billing as a princess who wants to escape her dull hometown. Instead of an unhealthy romance, Pirotta gives us a pair of clever co-conspirators. Other stories are equally charming. Arachne is so rude that it’s a positive pleasure to see her get her comeuppance, and it’s very satisfying to read that “Theseus was a brave man, but not very clever.” 

The Orchard Book of First Greek Myths is a collected volume of the 10 stories that were published individually as the First Greek Myths series. Some may find it more practical to buy the collected volume, but there is much more text on the page with many fewer illustrations to help the story along. As a result,  I’d recommend this book for school aged readers who are ready for a challenge, but the individual First Greek Myths for readers who find big books intimidating. – Krishni Burns

* 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).