D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths
by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire
When children are ready for myths, I think Norse myths are the ones to begin with. They are shorter, simpler and often funnier than those of the Greeks. The standard versions in English are those of Kevin Crossley-Holland (Viking, without notes, and The Penguin Book of Norse Myths, with them) and the older versions of Roger Lancelyn Green (Myths of the Norsemen) and Barbara Leonie Picard (Tales of the Norse Gods). These are excellent but they have only a few line drawings, and younger children will want a version with full colour illustrations. This one is something of a classic: the D'Aulaires were a husband and wife team who wrote and illustrated many picture books for children, including a companion volume of Greek Myths.
Few Norse myths survive, and by and large there is only one main version of each, so any decent collection should contain them all. And here they all are, retold in vigorous prose and with splendidly exuberant pictures. I particularly enjoyed seeing the sun and moon each in a cart being drawn by horses across the sky and pursued by a wolf. Thor goes fishing and pulls up the Midgard serpent. Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir makes numerous appearances. There is also a fine endpaper of the Norse cosmos. There is some unobtrusive editing out of the ruder passages. A Reader's Companion at the end is in fact a combined glossary and index, with a pronunciation guide and brief notes on the characters.
This splendid collection was well worth reissuing and deserves wide popularity.
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