By Ingri d'Aulaire, Edgar Parin d'Aulaire
The classic illustrated book of the Norse gods: how the world got built out of a dead frost giant, and how it burns down at Ragnarok in the end. Darker and more doom-bound than the Greek myths, with big stone-textured pictures throughout.
All the big Norse stories in one place. The world gets built out of the body of a killed frost giant, Odin trades an eye for wisdom, Thor loses his hammer and schemes to win it back, and Loki's cleverness keeps curdling into real harm. What sets these apart from the Greek myths is where they're all headed: from early on, everyone knows how it ends. Ragnarok, a last battle where the gods and the giants kill each other and the whole world burns before it comes back green. The d'Aulaires tell them in order, in plain storyteller's prose, with the dreamy stone-textured pictures the book has been known for since the sixties.
When your child wants the actual myths rather than a novel spun off them, this is the one to reach for. It gathers everything in order, in language a child can read alone or hear read aloud, and the illustrations are the ones a lot of grown-ups still see in their heads when they picture Thor or Odin. Because it's a collection, your child can pick out just the Thor chapters or just the Loki ones, or the two of you can read it front to back like a long saga over a run of bedtimes.