By Joan Holub, Suzanne Williams
Athena learns she's actually a goddess and gets sent to Mount Olympus Academy, where the Greek gods go to middle school and the new girl happens to be the brainy one.
Athena has always been the smartest girl in her class, and she's never known why she feels a little out of step with everyone around her. Then a letter shows up from Principal Zeus: she's a goddess, she's his daughter, and she's due at Mount Olympus Academy right away. Just like that she's the new girl at a school in the clouds, sharing a hall with Aphrodite, Persephone, and Artemis, inventing things no one's thought of yet, and steering clear of a snooty classmate named Medusa who can't stand her from the start. It's the Greek gods, only they're middle schoolers stumbling through first days, new friends, and a first crush.
The mythology here is cozy and low-stakes, and that's the whole appeal. It hands your child the big Olympians — Athena, Aphrodite, Artemis, Zeus — as regular classmates, so the names feel like old friends long before a heavier myth book asks anything of them. And the real story is a school story: being the new child, and not playing down what you're good at so people will like you. That's familiar ground for a myth-loving eight- or nine-year-old. If it clicks, there are dozens more Goddess Girls books waiting.