Source: Sara Fanelli's fantastic Mythological Monsters of Ancient Greece

Probably because I go on and on about it, I have been getting quite a few emails lately about what children's books we have on our shelf relating to classical mythology (as well as a few e-mails about the toys the kid was playing with during her retelling of the Birth of Pegasus).

First the library. I'm leaving out the obvious books for older kids (Bullfinch, Hamilton, Graves, and the proliferating young adult novels with mythological themes). A couple of these newer books were gifts, but the rest were thrift store finds or ones I came across at John King or some other used book store. I am opening comments on this post in case someone out there has a few mythology books (especially vintage) that are great (and they wouldn't mind sharing).

Beatrice Alexander (Florian, ill) Famous Myths of The Golden Age (California State Dep. of Education, 1969)†
Aliki, The Gods and Goddesses of Olympus (HarperCollins, 1994) (in print)
Heather Amery, Greek Myths for Young Children (Usborne, 1999) (in print)
Lucy Coats (A. Lewis, Ill.), Atticus the Storyteller's 100 Greek Myths (Orion, 2003) (in print)
Sally Pomme Clayton (Virginia Lee, ill) Persephone (Eerdmans, 2009) (in print)
Olivia Coolidge, Greek Myths (Houghton Mifflin, 1949) (in print)*
Ingri d'Aulaire, D'Auliere's Book of Greek Myths (Delacorte, 1992) (in print)
Sara Fanelli, Mythological Monsters of Ancient Greece (Candlewick, 2002)*
Penelope Farmer (ill. Graham McCallum) The Story of Persephone (William Morrow, 1973) (oop)*
Leonard Fisher, Theseus and the Minotaur (Holiday, 1992)
Charles Lamb, The Adventures of Ulysses (1808) (oop)
Penelope Lively, In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aeneid (Frances Lincoln, 2007) (in print)
Alice Low (Arvis Stewart, ill) Greek Gods and Heroes, Macmillan, 1985) (oop)
Jean Marzollo, Let's Go Pegasus (Little, Brown, 2006)*
Charles Mikolaycak, Orpheus (Harcourt Brace, 1992) (oop)º
Doris Orgel, Ariadne Awake (Viking, 1994)
Mary Pope Osborne, Favorite Greek Myths (Scholastic, 1989) (in print)*
Neil Phillip, The Adventures Of Odysseus (Scholastic, 1997)
Penelope Proddow (Barbara Cooney, ill) Hermes, Lord of Robbers (Doubleday, 1971) (oop)*
James Reeves (Krystyna Turska, ill) The Trojan Horse (Watts, 1968) (oop)
James Riordan & Christina Balit, The Twelve Labors of Hercules (Millbrook, 1997) (oop)
James Rumford, There's a Monster in the Alphabet (Houghton Mifflin, 2002)
I.M. Richardson, Odysseus and the Great Challenge (Troll Assoc., 1984) (oop)
Lynd Ward, The Silver Pony (Houghton Mifflin, 1973)˚
Helen L. Wilbur (Victor Juhasz, ill) Z is for Zeus, A Greek Mythology Alphabet (Sleeping Bear Press, 2008)
Jane Yolen, Wings (Harcourt, 1997)

*(recommended)
†My mother bought this book from the discard pile at the library branch where I used to ride my bike as a kid; this may be the exact same copy of this book that I loved as a boy.
ºThis book is strange. There are a lot of boobs. Sexy boobs. You may not find it appropriate for kids. May be more useful to read to your husband to get him in the mood.
˚Not really Greek mythology, but it features a Pegasus-like horse.

Also, this company (Bellerophon Books) produces a whole series of wonderful coloring books on classical subjects. I haven't even ordered them all yet, there are so many.

The next post will be about the toys.

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

Yeah, that's pretty much the entire Astérix universe on our dining room table. All kinds of old-school Latin geekiness will be roused by seeing this, I'm guessing. We had a French visitor recently ask if there was anything she could bring us from Paris. I might have mentioned that these guys are nearly impossible to get here in the states (but told her not to stress about it because we are hoping to take a trip to Montreal in August). She showed up with practically the entire Plastoy Astérix collection!* Even Dogmatix!

We already have all the Astérix videos that have been dubbed into English and the kid enjoys them and the whole idea of the magic potion (our favorite right now is 1968's Asterix and Cleopatra). These will be much-played with around here. And not just by me, I swear.

I have received quite a few emails (and yesterday, a few comments) requesting I share some of my favorite classical toys and books for kids, so watch out for a detailed post about that in the near future (and nothing on that list will require kindly French friends).

*And wait until you see the French kids clothes she brought. The sales were on in Paris.

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

Our friend Kathy Leisen is an artist and musician here in Detroit. I had seen various works in progress during visits to the house she shares with an old friend of mine, but after I saw a recent exhibition of her final work (particularly this painting, from this series) I got the idea to commission a painting of my daughter's all-time favorite mythological story: the birth of Pegasus. If you don't know it, Perseus travels to Medusa's lair to retrieve her head in order to save his mother from the clutches of the cruel king who wants to marry her. Using winged sandals provided by Hermes and a mirrored shield provided by Athena, he avoids being turned into a statue and manages to decapitate the gorgon. From the blood, Pegasus is born. I suppose I could also provide a more adorable version of the myth:

Anyway, I loved the whimsical animals in Kathy's earlier paintings, and suggested she paint a few animals that had been turned to stone returning to life (as some versions of the myth mercifully allow). I had no idea it would turn out this magical. Kathy (without prompting) painted some of our favorite "Detroit wildlife": pheasants, foxes, rabbits, stray cats. And a llama. It was great to have the artist in the room when I brought my daughter over to see it: the kid literally drew in a quick breath and her eyes grew huge. There was no critical pretension or politeness of friendship to muck up the moment. It was pure awe. She loves it. And so do I.

Kathy was worried there was too much blood. I was like, "Are you kidding? Have you heard this kid tell a story?"

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

So this is the third time in less than a year that I've linked to content posted on Bibliodyssey; that's a very strong hint that you should add it to your feed reader and regularly get blown away by the beautiful and rare antique images that peacay finds and posts there.

In this case, it's a late sixteenth-century "grotesque" alphabet by Italian artist Giacomo Paolini. Remember that mythological abcedary I made from found graffiti a couple years ago? Yeah, well somebody had already down something way better than that practically half a millennium ago: Bacchus, Cadmus, Dedalus and Icarus, Ganymede, Hercules, Lyacon, King Midas, Narcissus, Orpheus, Romulus and Remus, Theseus. If only the files were bigger, you could do some incredible things with these. As they are, they'll make another pretty good coloring book for the kid. I tracked down the ones that weren't posted on Bibliodyssey and posted them here (click on each image to see more detail):

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.