Kidlit: Myths, Legends & Folktales

A few summers ago, we brought Mary Pope’s version of The Odyssey written for kids (highly recommended) along on a trip to the south of Italy. A rocky shore, it turned out, was the perfect place to hear about Odysseus losing his men to Scylla and Charybdis and climbing out of the water into a cave. We weren’t far from the Strait of Messina, after all! And it sparked everyone’s imagination for the rest of our stay and helped to bring to life all of the history we were encountering. 

So I was especially excited to learn of this new collection of mythology with a global focus—and even more excited when my friend and former colleague (and kidlit contributor) turned out to be its author! Once again, Alli Brydon, a children’s book editor and writer based in the south of England, has generously agreed to help us expand our childrens’-book libraries:

Right now, I’m in the mood for mythology.
I’m loving those legends. I’m fired up about folktales.

Maybe it’s the coziness of late autumn…
Maybe it’s the spookiness of Halloween just gone…
Maybe because this week has been declared #FolktaleWeek.

Or maybe…it’s because I have a new book just published called Myths and Legends of the World!
In honor of my latest children’s book publication, out with Lonely Planet Kids right now, I thought I’d bring you on a tour of some of my favorite kidlit featuring myths, legends, and folktales. (And offer a giveaway!) I hope you’ll find these books as awesome, adventurous, and spellbinding as I do.

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The Davis Dirt

I’ve been working on something exciting this past month: I’ve taken over as publisher of a local, print publication called The Davis Dirt!

It’s a Davis culture calendar, with a day-by-day guide to events happening around town—from gallery openings and campus concerts to pub quizzes and poetry readings. I would pick it up at the library every month when we first moved to town and mark it up, and I still suggest it as a source to others looking for cool things to do.

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Scenes from our Halloween

Happy Halloween! Hope everyone had a great night—we basically melted into the sheets after a fun, full day.

It started early with a costume parade at the kids’ school. We did a slightly less gruesome makeup job and dashed off to the blacktop. I loved seeing all of the joy and creativity! It’s hard to believe that it’s only been in the last two years that the kids could wear costumes.

Skyler’s kinder day starts later, so she switched into last year’s Elsa outfit for the morning and came home with the appropriate dirty marks of day well-played before switching back into mermaid mode.

Then, Aron came home early and we took some family photos before heading off for the candy…

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