Blog: Classics Books for Young Readers

It’s that time of year again, when it behooves all generous adults to give gifts to the young people in their lives. As an avid reader, books were always my favorite presents. Now that I’m an adult and a fully-fledged classical scholar, I enjoy sharing my love of the past through interesting and innovative books about and inspired by the ancient world. Over at Calliope’s Library: Books for Young Readers, we are busy collecting beloved books from our own youth and new exciting publications to share with younger generations. Here are some of our board members’ favorite additions this year to inspire you as you hunt through bookstore shelves and bookseller’s websites. If none of these strikes your fancy, head over to the main website, https://www.calliopeslibrary.org/, for many more!

For toddlers who like to talk:

The Little Philosophers Series

All of these books are amazing, but my personal favorite is Love with Plato. This book takes the main points of Socrates’ speech from the Symposium and distills it down to something that a toddler can understand. According to the book, Plato believed that people can love ideas like truth and beauty, and emphasizes that love of what’s inside a person, what makes them themselves, makes people happiest. A cast of multiracial and ability-diverse youngsters explores Plato’s ideas across the pages, and the book frequently pauses to ask readers questions about what they think and feel.

— Krishni Burns

For a short introduction to Greek mythology:

The Gods and Goddesses of Olympus, written and illustrated by Aliki

If you are looking for a book for kids who aren’t ready for D’Aulaires’ yet, this beautifully illustrated short picture book starts with Chaos, quickly outlines the birth of the gods (Titans and Olympians) and the war between them, and then spends a page or two introducing each Olympian god and providing synopses of or allusions to some of their most well-known stories. The intricate illustrations on each page also allude to the gods’ stories and symbols, providing incentive for attentive readers to look further for full explanations. Two caveats: First, the depictions of the gods and goddesses do not accurately represent the cultural diversity of the ancient Mediterranean. Second, this is not a storybook, so readers looking to sit down with a set of fully articulated stories will not find that this book satisfies that need, but there is no shortage of lengthy favorite storybooks. This book, instead, fires up young readers’ imaginations so that they go looking for those longer titles.

— Nava Cohen

For readers who love beautiful art:

Atalanta’s Race by Shirley Climo, illustrated by Alexander Koshkin

This is my favorite Greek mythology picture book. It is an excellent read-aloud for kids with a longish attention span. Every page is illustrated or faced by a beautiful painting by Alexander Koshkin. The book tells the story of Atalanta, from her father’s cruel decision to expose her as an infant, through her nurture first by a she-bear and then a hunter, her return to father’s house, the famous foot race and the golden apples, Atalanta’s marriage to Melanion, and the couple’s final transformation into lions as punishment for their failure to thank Aphrodite. This book is out of print, but used copies are available for sale online.

— Diane Arnson Svarlien

For fans of transformed myths:

Wings by Christopher Myers

In Christopher Myers’s Wings, a young girl recounts the harassment that a winged boy named Ikarus Jackson experiences from schoolmates, teachers, neighborhood kids, and police. When the narrator summons her voice to oppose the boy’s antagonists and celebrate his difference, they both feel freed. Buoyed by the support of the girl-narrator, Ikarus Jackson’s wings become an expression of full, soaring self, and Myers’s picture book becomes a recuperative reception of ancient myth.

— Rebecca Resinski

For readers of Spanish

Colección Mitos Clasicos series

Yoandy Cabrera Ortega of Rockford University recommended this series to me, and I adore them. Each book in the series tackles a different myth in a lively, sensitive way. The myths are true to traditional versions, but they are often told from unique points of view, or with special insight into characters’ thoughts. Ricardo Gómez is the series’ author, but each book is illustrated by a different artist, many of them award-winners. The whole series is a feast for the eyes, as well as a fascinating new look at Greek mythology.

— Krishni Burns

For folks who like comics and graphic novels:

Isis and Osiris: To the Ends of the Earth by Jeff Limke, illustrated by David Witt

This is part of a series, Graphic Myths and Legends, which includes tales in comic-book format from various worldwide cultures. ​​The story revolves around the god Set’s attempts to destroy his brother Osiris, and Osiris’s wife Isis’s efforts to find him and save him. Most of the tale is narrated by Isis and seen from her point of view. David Witt’s art is inventive and beautiful. Black borders and panel dividers create an overall dark look, and the panels are full of rich golds, blues, and purples. An especially striking panel early in the story shows a close-up of Isis’s tear-filled eyes, with the baby she has placed in the fire reflected in her irises.

— Diane Arnson Svarlien

For Percy Jackson fans:

The Cronos Chronicles by Anne Ursu

This series is set in a modern-day world where the Olympian gods exist, but they’ve retired from active involvement with humans because we are too much work (harsh, but fair). The two main characters are Charlotte, a sarcastic middle schooler with a chip on her shoulder, and her sweet, heroic cousin Zee, who are dragged into the gods’ affairs when their friends start to succumb to an unknown illness of divine origin. Each book in the trilogy focuses on one of the three sons of Cronos: Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Charlotte is white, but Zee is biracial, and his grandmother, who plays a small but vital part in the story, is Malawian. The first book is The Shadow Thieves, but I opted for The Siren Song cover because it’s cooler.

— Krishni Burns

For folks who love adventure on the high seas:

The Ancient Ocean Blues by Jack Mitchell

A young Roman named Marcus Oppius Sabinus is entrusted by his cousin Gaius (“the greatest briber in the city” and an employee of Julius Caesar) with a voyage to Athens to intercept a messenger from Cicero. Marcus finds himself traveling onboard a merchant ship accompanied by Homer (a freedman and a publisher) and a lively Roman girl named Paulla who is a passionate reader of Greek romance novels. The setting of this book is historical, but the narrative that unfolds owes more to the romance novel tradition than to history: we encounter shipwrecks, pirates, captivity and slavery, disguise, performance, trickery, love, heroism, a long-lost child, and an unknown island.

— Deborah Roberts

For readers who like older fiction:

The Perilous Seat by Caroline Dale Snedeker

This historical novel, set in 5^th century BCE Delphi, tells the story of Eleutheria, a gifted and intelligent girl who resists the restrictions of women’s lives in ancient Greece. The “perilous seat” of the title is the tripod on which Apollo’s priestess, the Pythia, delivers her oracles. Many of Snedeker’s books are being reissued through Amazon with new covers. The Perilous Seat is also available as an ebook, both through Amazon Kindle and through Project Gutenberg.

— Deborah Roberts

For lovers of historical mysteries:

All the Truth That’s in Me by Julie Berry

When Judith was fourteen years old, she went missing. Two years later, she returns to town with part of her tongue cut out. What happened? How will Judith rejoin her community amidst the suspicion swirling around her absence and return? Julie Berry’s All the Truth That’s in Me presents Judith’s story through first-person memories and reflections that flow back and forth from Judith’s past traumatic experiences to her ongoing challenges of reassimilation. The novel’s setting is reminiscent of Puritan New England and may seem distant from classics, but classical mythology enters the story when a teacher snidely compares Judith to Io from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. As Judith works to distinguish herself from the mythological maiden-turned-cow, readers are invited to compare and contrast other elements of Io’s story with Judith’s own.

— Rebecca Resinski

For serious mythology fans:

King of Ithaka by Tracy Barrett

Tracy Barrett is a classicist and humanities scholar who has made quite a name for herself as an author of books for children and young adults. King of Ithaka is one of her best books so far. It focuses on the experiences of the family that Odysseus left behind in Ithaca, particularly young Telemachos, who matures and comes into his own. Warning: if you are looking for a positive representation of Odysseus and friends, this is not the book you want; the story is presented in a gritty, dystopian fashion, which may shift the reader's perspective of some familiar characters. If your reader is ready to confront some of the uglier realities of the text, however, Barrett is an excellent introduction to a more critical reading of the Odyssey.

— Nava Cohen

For horror/dystopian fiction readers:

The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey

Melanie is a special, brilliant girl living in a terrifying post-apocalyptic world where flesh-eating zombies own the British countryside. She is safe living in the Hotel Oscar compound, though. She loves her classes, especially mathematics, and her teachers, especially Ms. Justineau, who sometimes reads stories from Greek mythology. Her favorite myth is the myth of Pandora. She doesn’t understand why the soldiers are so careful to keep their hands away from her mouth when they strap her to her chair. After all, she jokes, she doesn’t bite.

The less you know about this book going into it, the better. I’ll just say that I am neither a fan of horror nor dystopian fiction, but it blew me away. I have seldom read a more fascinating novel.

— Krishni Burns