D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths

"D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths This is the same book of Greek myths I was talking about earlier. It was published in the US in the 1960s and for many young American readers in particular (I grew up in Bermuda, on that general side of the Atlantic) this was their introduction to all the classic stories like Theseus and the Minotaur, Hercules, Daedalus and Icarus and so on. Of course there are lots of other fantastic myth compendiums for children out there but the beautiful, lithograph illustrations were what made this one an almost sacred text for me – I found them completely mesmerising and used to pore over them rather than reading the stories sometimes. The d’Aulaires of the title were Ingri and Edgar, a Norwegian and Swiss-German immigrant couple who, as I’ve since discovered, were pioneers in a golden era for picture books. I do recognise that it is of course bizarre in all kinds of ways that ancient myths have come to be seen as appropriate reading material for children, given that most of them are about pretty disturbing subjects – parents killing their children, women being turned into trees to escape predatory men and so on. But the stories are just so gripping – I rarely meet kids who don’t love them – and the d’Aulaires’ version, like most of the others on the market, helpfully glosses over a lot of the dodgy bits from the originals. I love the way the birth of Aphrodite, goddess of love, is breezily dealt with in one sentence, ‘Nobody knew from where she had come.’ (Awkward fact check: she emerged from the foaming sea after Uranos chucked his father’s severed genitals in there). There’s a particular illustration from the book which has always stuck in my head, of the deified Four Winds who were kept under control by their keeper, King Aeolus. Each drawing sums up their individual personalities – fierce and powerful for Boreas, the strong north wind; cherubic and carefree for Zephyr, the gentle west wind. I’ve always remembered it and I actually named a team of chariot horses in Circus Maximus: Race to the Death after the Four Winds and gave them something of those ancient prototype personalities."