What a delight – for the young and the young at heart! Athina Mitropoulos-Monk has ingeniously combined characters and events from Greek mythology with characters and events from more recent fairy tales. And she has told the stories entirely in rhyming couplets.
Hansel and Gretel venture into a labyrinthine home and eventually persuade the child-eating Minotaur to become a vegetarian. If you want a good eat/don't turn to meat.
Penthesilea becomes a pseudo-Cinderella, meets her prince (Achilles, actually), beats the other girls in an archery contest and rides off into the sunset with Achilles, exclaiming: What? Marriage? Not yet./That's hardly in keeping with a modern mind-set.
The third tale is of Prometheus, Pandora and the Beanstalk, the latter of which rises majestically to Mt. Olympus where a fierce Zeus is eventually overcome, being blinded by an egg, Pandora lumbers the gods with all the ills in her box, and Prometheus brings us fire.
Next, Little Red Riding Hood meets Dionysus who becomes a wolf to confront her. It's sad that wolves get such a reaction/when all they seek is some interaction. Grandma becomes an Agave-like cannibal who actually eats her granddaughter before spewing her out again. Anything for a traditional happy ending!
The final story links Snow White with Medusa. Athena helps Snow White to sort out her glamorous wicked stepmother the Queen, who ends up with snakes as her hair. But along comes Prince Charming (aka Perseus) whose twin capabilities are as a hair-stylist and as a snake-charmer – a useful combination in the circumstances! The Queen is domesticated and a happy ending inevitably ensues.
The rhyming couplet scheme works well, especially perhaps when the stories are read aloud. Many of the rhymes are successful and often amusing, with only the very occasional drift into McGonagall territory.
If you read or listen to these tales there's no guarantee that you (unlike everyone in this book) will live happily ever after, but you should at least be happy for a while.
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