Mortals and Immortals of Greek Mythology, a review

So as you can tell from the image, this book was originally published in French. Sadly I can’t read (or speak!) French, but Edelweiss provided me with an eCopy of the English translation of this book in return for an unbiased review. One thing to note is that this is translated into US English, with the Americanised spellings. I’m sure most won’t notice, however as a Brit I noticed the “mom” etc.

Now, onto the actual contents of this book! This graphic novel/illustrated book covers Greek Mythology in a simplified format to allow children to understand the events. As anyone who is familiar with the Greek gods will know, the stories surrounding them are normally filled with violence and gore as they commit various acts of revenge. However, this book has made these tales more child-friendly without removing the essence of the tales. There is still violence present, however, there are no details and the frequency of the violence has been reduced where not integral to the story. So I definitely think that the author did a great job with making these tales suitable for the younger generation.

I am not intrinsically familiar with Greek mythology, however, I do have some knowledge of it and this book seems to remain faithful to the source material and the accompanying illustrations are pretty and simplistic enough that a child can notice the links to the events in the stories.

This is a lovely book to introduce children to the world of mythology and I’m glad that both French and English speaking children will be able to enjoy this work.