Tanglewood Tales

Interesting, innocent retellings of some Greek myths for children. In this telling of "The Minotaur," Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, does not go with Theseus, because it would be too cruel to leave her father alone---even though she knows it was her father's idea to have the Minotaur eat an annual allotment of young people. Still, she has stopped this from happening in the future---for her tather's sake as much as Theseus'. In fact, the narrator berates "some low-minded people" who say otherwise! [p. 43]
[Perhaps not relevant, but this book was pleasant and fun to read. Unlike what I remember of The Scarlet Letter, which left me wondering how such an exciting plot could be be told in such a dull and distant manner.]

Greek myths retold for a very young audience; Theseus is described as a good king for listening to his mum, and Medea as wicked and naughty.

Parts of this are outdated but my younger self would have still found these stories fun and engaging. Here there’s adventures, a little bit of magic, monsters to fight, some quirky characters and heroic deeds. When the book ended I wanted it to carry on and tell me more stories.

More sanitized Greek tales and myths from Hawthorne, this time focused on heroes such as Jason, Theseus, and Odysseus. Still good, but I enjoyed the first book more - they were more fun. The last tale was an attempt to clean up the story of Persephone to 19th century standards for children. It was especially hard to do without mentioning that all of the characters were gods. But Hawthorne gave it his best shot, and almost pulled it off.

I truly enjoyed being able to read this book. Although I may not be the biggest fan of traditional mythology this author did an excellent job in his arrangement of these classic tales. Although Greek myths are often very repetitive in nature where the same hero fights the same type of battle against insurmountable odds and strange creatures, this author changed that through choosing some of the great heroes and explaining where they had come from briefly but skipping to one specific journey or tale and going into more detail about that. For example, when Theseus was traveling to the island of the Minotaur instead of just skipping over the journey the author chose to add the details through saying the young people were not always sad. At show more this point he also related the story to the audience through causing the reader to think about what they would do if there weren't any adults around for that length of time. I also feel the author did an excellent job at telling one part of the lives of these heroes while at the same time not missing any important information from their lives. Although I feel in some ways this book could benefit from more illustration I also appreciate that it may have been a style choice to encourage the use of imagination. The main theme of this book is courage, and bravery, which Greek mythology has always been an excellent way to convey. Overall I feel this would be a great book for a classroom library. show less

This was the book that started my love of mythology. I read these tales over and over at various ages.

A fun retelling of Greek legend, though often using roman names.

Retellings of Greel myths for children. Rather bowdlerized by modern standards.