Here are 96 books that Spindlefish and Stars fans have personally recommended if you like
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I had a lot of troubles as a kid, and my favorite escape was getting lost in fairy tales and mythology. For me, those stories were a window into ancient worlds full of strange rules and powers, where magic was real and nothing was outside the bounds of possibility. As an author, I get to build my own stories and worlds inspired by the tales I loved so much as a kid, and I’ve loved reading about new heroes and heroines whose tales are rooted in the powerful traditions of peoples from all over the globe. I’m happy to be sharing some of my recent favorite mythology-inspired books!
Kiki manages her anxiety by drawing stories featuring her family ancestors, but when her sketchbook becomes a doorway into the world of Indian mythology, she’s dropped into a fight between a Hindu Goddess and a Demon King trying to escape into the real world.
I love stories featuring kids who doubt themselves, but who learn they are strong and capable. Any kid struggling with anxiety will surely see themselves in Kiki. The adventure is fantastic, Mandanna’s writing is lovely, and Kiki and her friends are all easy to care about. Whether readers are new to Indian mythology, or they’ve already burned through the Aru Shah and Kiranmala stories—this is an exciting and expansive tale promising much more to come.
Kiki Kallira is more of a worrier than a warrior - but today she will learn to be a hero. The mythical beasts she loves to draw have come to life, and she is the only one who can defeat them. A middle-grade fantasy inspired by Hindu legends about anxiety, creativity and finding your own strengths. For 8+ fans of Abi Elphistone and The Land of Roar.
Kiki Kallira has always been a worrier. Did she lock the front door? Is there a terrible reason her mum is late? Recently her anxiety has been getting out of control, but one…
I had a lot of troubles as a kid, and my favorite escape was getting lost in fairy tales and mythology. For me, those stories were a window into ancient worlds full of strange rules and powers, where magic was real and nothing was outside the bounds of possibility. As an author, I get to build my own stories and worlds inspired by the tales I loved so much as a kid, and I’ve loved reading about new heroes and heroines whose tales are rooted in the powerful traditions of peoples from all over the globe. I’m happy to be sharing some of my recent favorite mythology-inspired books!
This fun read, full of humor and adventure, is a mash-up of Viking lore and the story of Beowulf in a contemporary setting. Abby, grieving over the death of her mother, is also at a new school—not to mention training as the last of the Aesir warriors destined to hunt and kill Grendels. When a Grendel starts hunting her instead, Abby has a lot to unravel and conquer, fast.
I adore quirky stories that play with Western myths (heck, I wrote one), and this book has that in spades. For kids that love Norse mythology, this will provide smiles, snorts, and a perfect dose of white-knuckled page-turning. We grow with Abby as she builds new friendships and conquers old fears. She’s a great contemporary heroine with absolutely relatable problems.
Percy Jackson meets Thor in a laugh-out-loud, action-packed adventure inspired by Norse mythology.
Twelve-year-old Abby Beckett is proud to come from a long line of elite Viking warriors known as the Aesir. She's spent her entire life training to hunt the horrific creatures known as Grendels--the ancient foe of the Aesir--just like her mother did before she died. But there's just one, small problem: No one has seen a Grendel in centuries, and the Viking Council wants to disband the Aesir . . . forever.
When her father is injured in an attack that leaves him in a coma, Abby…
Maurice Sendak said, "Children do live in fantasy and reality, they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do." In other words, children do the impossible. Growing up, stories where the real and imagined collided were like fresh air when I felt like I couldn't breathe. They've always been important to me, and for many reasons, hold a special place in our literature. Now, as a full-time teacher, writer, and daddy, I get to be on the other side of that joy equation, guiding new readers and writers as they become travelers of the fantastic.
This book does African American magic on a scale that I’ve never seen before. It was given to me as a gift. “Cameron, you need to read this.” And they were right. I’ve read plenty of fantasy that makes use of the same African American and Caribbean folklore (my family is from Belize) but never at such depth for middle-grade novels.
I love how we get dropped right into the mix very early without explanation because no explanation is needed. I’m on the inside. I know exactly who and what he’s talking about. And because it’s a full-on fantasy novel, I got to know these staple characters that everybody thinks they know, like Brer Fox, as whole people, not just walking, talking cautionary tales.
Best-selling author Rick Riordan presents Kwame Mbalia's epic fantasy, a middle grade American Gods set in a richly-imagined world populated with African American folk heroes and West African gods.
*"Mbalia expertly weaves a meaningful portrayal of family and community with folklore, myth, and history―including the legacy of the slave trade―creating a fast-paced, heroic series starter."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Seventh grader Tristan Strong feels anything but strong ever since he failed to save his best friend when they were in a bus accident together. All he has left of Eddie is the journal his friend wrote stories in. Tristan is dreading…
I had a lot of troubles as a kid, and my favorite escape was getting lost in fairy tales and mythology. For me, those stories were a window into ancient worlds full of strange rules and powers, where magic was real and nothing was outside the bounds of possibility. As an author, I get to build my own stories and worlds inspired by the tales I loved so much as a kid, and I’ve loved reading about new heroes and heroines whose tales are rooted in the powerful traditions of peoples from all over the globe. I’m happy to be sharing some of my recent favorite mythology-inspired books!
Sometimes the best book for readers who love mythology-inspired stories is a book of mythology! There are lots of these compendiums out there, but it can be hard to find collections that don’t feel distant or dull. This one is recent (if not “new”), and is really well done. Illustrated like a graphic novel, Gods and Heroes highlights funny and quirky aspects of engaging characters, while also sharing in-depth stories that will entrance middle grade readers.
I loved the humor and connection Briggs brought to characters from twenty-three different cultures. These are personalities that are entertaining and powerful enough to have their stories handed down through thousands of years of human history, and who will continue to inspire stories in the years to come.
It's the perfect way to introduce kids to legendary lands, powerful gods, brave heroes, wild creatures, and more! Skillfully told and illustrated by Korwin Briggs, it's the who's who and what's what of ancient culture, organised alphabetically.
I write about aloneness and individuals, what it takes to connect to family and community, and how to hang on to the people we hold dear. This means I think a lot about points of view and personal perception. We often wonder: Have I got this right? Did they get my meaning? Does everybody feel this? And more often than not, everybody does. These interpretations are both personal and universal at the same time. We all fear loss; we all have to be brave to hold onto people we love and principles we value.
Book 1 in a 4-book series, and our hero is Kaidance Monroe. I love the world the author hascreated and I really connected with Kaidance and the challenges she faces. This story is amodern-day take on the ancient Greek myth about The Fates who control our lives, and I lovethis retelling because the core message holds true for each and every one of us, that we canonly control so much of our lives, that there are forces bigger than us that we have to deal with,but it's how we cope that's important. I’ve read the entire series. The author doesn’t drop thepace. I loved experiencing this fantastical world on a rollercoaster ride, clinging on until the end.
My name is Kaidance Monroe, and sometimes when I touch people, I see how they die.
"Love, betrayal, mythology, mystery, you name it this has it! Hold onto your horses and Minotaurs people as this ride is definitely going to get bumpy." ★★★★★
After I saw my little brother's death but failed to stop it, my parents abandoned me to a juvenile detention facility. I don't let people touch me anymore. Not my fingertips, not my skin, not my heart. Just before I turned 18, I got a visit from a cute guy, who tricked me into giving up my…
I don't write within received categories: our lives aren't lived in categories, but are full of varying realities, whether of home, childhood, marriage, parenthood, fantasy, dream, work, or relaxation, and more all mixed together. I can't write in any other way, however dominant a particular strand or age may be on the surface in a given work.Orpheus Rising may have a child hero, and a fantastic, elegant Edwardian Elephant as a spirit guide, but it let me tell a story of love lost and regained, of family broken and remade, of a father in despair and remade, themes of real importance in any life.
This is the best collection of the Greek Myths I believe, and of course covers the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, the direct inspiration for my book. In the classical myth the poet and musician Orpheus loses his love, Eurydice, and sings his way into Hades, overcoming all opposition, until even Hades agrees to let him have Eurydice back in the living world, so long as he does not look back at her until returned there. Once in daylight he does look back, and loses her forever as she hasn't stepped into daylight too. However, unlike Orpheus my young hero succeeds.
Robert Graves's classic retelling of the Greek Myths is definitive, comprehensive and unparalleled - and available now in the Penguin Classics Deluxe series, featuring a new introduction from Rick Riordan (bestselling author of the Percy Jackson and Olympian series).
Including many of the greatest stories ever told - the labours of Hercules, the voyage of the Argonauts, Theseus and the minotaur, Midas and his golden touch, the Trojan War and Odysseus's journey home - Robert Graves's superb and comprehensive retelling of the Greek myths for a modern audience has been regarded for over fifty years as the definitive version.
Since I retired from lecturing in Classical Studies I’ve been writing more pieces on women in the ancient world, and also some plays. One of them, 189 Pieces, is about the Portland Vase, a beautiful example of Roman glass whose label in the British Museum tells us that it was owned by the Duke of Portland. This is true—he’d inherited it—but it was bought at great expense by his grandmother, the wonderful Duchessof Portland. Giving women their place in history has been my aim in much of my work. Nowadays I’m obsessed with female footwear, and Cinderella, Goody Two-Shoes, and Carrie Bradshaw take up a lot of my time.
Vernant was an influential scholar when I began writing about women in ancient Greece in the 1990s. His discussions of the social, political and religious institutions of the time, and their relationship with popular mythology, were informed by French structuralist theory. For me his analysis of the role of marriage in a society devoted to virgin goddesses was particularly stimulating.
In this groundbreaking study, Jean-Pierre Vernant delineates a compelling new vision of ancient Greece. Myth and Society in Ancient Greece takes us far from the calm and familiar images of Polykleitos and the Parthenon to reveal a fundamentally other culture ― one of slavery, of masks and death, of scapegoats, of ritual hunting, and of ecstasies.
Vernant’s provocative discussions of various institutions and practices (including war, marriage, and sacrifice) detail the complex intersection of the religious, social, and political structures of ancient Greece. The book concludes with Vernant’s authoritative genealogy of the study of myth from Antiquity to structuralism and…
I struggled a lot with reading as a kid, I would not call myself a natural reader at all. When I was young, fantasy and magic stories were one of the few genres that could grip me enough to make me actually focus and attempt to read but I always hated the ones that took themselves too seriously (they always felt impossibly long to get through). Now, as a children’s author, myself, it’s my hope and passion to serve fellow young-readers-who-don’t-consider-themselves-readers with fun accessible stories. I hope you enjoy!
A school drama with a dash of Greek Mythology when Helen of Troy’s amulet gets into a young girl's hands.
Juliet is suddenly doused with attention and does her best to navigate it. The story is very funny and lighthearted, this was another one of my favorite school reads.
Juliet Dove is a girl who doesn't like to be noticed. But though she may be shy, she has a wickedly sharp wit. Whenever someone does take notice of her, she tears into the person with a savagery that's earned her the nickname Killer. Juliet ends up leaving Mr. Elives' magic shop with Helen of Troy's amulet--that is, a virtual man magnet. Juliet doesn't know what she's got, but the boys in her class do--they start to notice her. Soon every boy in town is swoony for her. Yet, much as she'd like to lose all the unwanted attention, she…
When I tell people I think about Greek myths for a living, they tend not to believe me. But I’ve never considered Greek myths to be at all odd or mysterious. After all, telling stories is a very normal human activity. Most recently I’ve been working to better understand how ancient communities attached stories to the places they lived in and this has resulted in MANTO, a huge mapping project, which anyone can look at here: https://www.manto-myth.org/manto
This book is all you could ever have wanted to know about the monsters of Greek myth and the impact they have had on our imaginations. It’s a collaboration resulting in 40 articles that range across various monsters, monster theory, and the strange borders between the real and the imaginary.
The Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical Myth presents forty chapters about the unique and terrifying creatures from myths of the long-ago Near East and Mediterranean world, featuring authoritative contributions by many of the top international experts on ancient monsters and the monstrous. The first part provides original studies of individual monsters such as the Chimaera, Cerberus, the Hydra, and the Minotaur, and of monster groups such as dragons, centaurs, sirens, and Cyclopes. This section also explores their encounters with the major heroes of classical myth, including Perseus, Jason, Heracles, and Odysseus. The second part examines monsters of ancient folklore…
There is more than one history of the human world and more than one high culture–but all those histories and cultures may contribute to a unified sense of being and human potential. We need to step outside our immediate world, history, culture, and sensibility to learn–as G.K. Chesterton remarked–that humanity can be great and even glorious under conditions and with beliefs and fancies far different from ours. Knowing this, we may also gain new insight into our familiar local world. We may end, in Kipling’s words, by realizing that in the endless opposition of We and They, We ourselves are only a sort of They!
I first encountered Otto’s book just before going to Oxford University in 1964, and there, I discovered a way of understanding ancient Greek devotion to their gods.
By Otto’s account, those gods were whole worlds of meaning, from sexual joy (Aphrodite) and homicidal fury (Ares) to more subtle visions of the world (Hermes, the traveler in Twilight) and (finally) Zeus as the guarantor of promises, and of hospitality.
He also introduced me to the idea that the Greeks saw “gods” in moments of sudden joy or inspiration: the lucky moment when–in the poet Pindar’s words–a god sheds a shining light on our usual dreamy life.
Appassionante e insuperata ricostruzione dell’universo religioso greco, questo libro avvicina sapientemente il lettore alle figure della religione olimpica – e al loro peculiare modo di manifestarsi – seguendo una duplice da un lato Otto esamina il culto dei dodici dèi olimpici (soffermandosi anzitutto su Atena, Apollo, Artemide, Afrodite, Ermete), dall’altro ce li presenta come esseri che, grazie alle loro divine epifanie – tanto diverse eppure così sottilmente collegate le une alle altre –, vivono una vita inesauribile, compiuta in sé. E ammirevole è la sua prosa allorché si confronta con le più enigmatiche fra le divinità, come nel famoso ritratto…
