Myths, Legends, Fairy Tales and other retellings
This is actually my favourite sort of story. The first story I ever remember hearing was Balder the Beautiful, a Norse myth. When I was at my secondary school, I used to bunk off PE and Games, which I always hated and was no good at (climb a rope? How?) and hide in the well-stocked library, reading Greek myths.
I discovered the rest of the Norse myths later and then the Celtic ones and I loved them all. I think you miss out on so much of the reference in English literature if you don’t know the classical myths and I’d say the same about Bible stories. It’s not a matter of belief but of what underpins Western culture.
And since I enjoy books that draw on that culture, like Diana Wynne Jones’s Eight Days of Luke, for instance or Robin McKinley’s Spindle’s End, I constantly return to these satisfying originals.
Here are some of my re-tellings:
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Buy from Amazon (pbk) |
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Animals
of the Bible