By Marcia Williams
The Greek myths as comic strips, speech bubbles and all, with a row of little Greeks along the margins heckling the gods while the stories play out.
Marcia Williams lays the big Greek stories out in bright comic panels. Theseus heads into the labyrinth after the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus strap on the wax wings, Perseus goes after Medusa's head, Pandora lifts the lid, Arachne out-weaves a goddess and pays for it, and Orpheus walks into the underworld to bring Eurydice back. Every page is crammed. The gods bicker in speech bubbles, and along the borders a line of tiny spectators in togas mutters and jokes about whatever the gods are up to, which is where a lot of the comedy lives. Your child can get through a whole myth in about two pages.
For a child who isn't ready to sit through a chapter of Perseus, this is the fastest way into the real myths. Marcia Williams trades depth for speed: she keeps the actual plots, the real names, and the real endings, and she lets go of the grandeur. Nothing here rolls or thunders. What your child gets instead is the whole shape of the story in a handful of panels, which is about right for a six- or seven-year-old whose appetite for these tales outruns their reading. And it reaches a good way up, because a nine-year-old who already knows the myths will come back to it for the jokes in the margins.