Greek Beasts and Heroes: The Fire Breather
This is the sixth volume in the series, giving us nine more tales from ancient Greece. First of all, we meet the three Furies – fierce women with snakes in their hair, who fly around punishing people with their whips and torches. Then we discover how the original Olympic Games came to be held. Most of the volume – seven stories in all – is devoted to Heracles and his labours. Every year Heracles is set another seemingly impossible task and during these he encounters a three-headed giant, a boar the size of a house, a fire-breathing bull and man-eating horses. But perhaps his most unappealing task was to have to clear up twenty years’ worth of cow dung!
These simply-told stories provide an ideal introduction to Greek myths and legends for 5-8 year olds. Each tale is just the right length for a bedtime story, or for more confident readers to read alone. For the enthusiast, the book can be read as a whole, as each tale is cleverly linked by Atticus, a storyteller who is travelling across ancient Greece to attend the storytelling festival near Troy.
Beautifully illustrated in colour, this volume will fire the imagination and transport the reader, or listener, to a magical world of monsters and super-human powers.
