By Donna Jo Napoli
National Geographic's gorgeous retelling of the Norse myths, with lyrical storytelling on one page and real Viking history in the margins on the next.
This is the Norse myths retold as story, Odin and his ravens, Thor and his hammer, Loki's tricks, the building of Asgard's wall, the death of Baldur, the doom of Ragnarok, in Donna Jo Napoli's warm, flowing prose and Christina Balit's jewel-bright, gold-flecked paintings. What sets it apart is the National Geographic touch running alongside: little fact boxes and timelines about the real Vikings who told these tales, so a child gets the myth and the history of the myth in the same sitting.
Some children are as much fact-hound as story-lover; this is the myth collection for them. Napoli tells the tales with real feeling, so they don't read like a dry index of gods, and the National Geographic sidebars feed the part of your child that wants to know what's true, who the Vikings were, where they sailed, why they told these stories. It's a natural companion to the D'Aulaires book on this shelf: same myths, warmer prose, and a whole layer of real history the classic doesn't have. Beautiful enough to double as a gift.