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Tales of Ancient Greece
Retells the classic stories of Pandora, Phaeton, Hercules, Orpheus, and Eurydice
Paperback
First published January 1, 1930
About the author
Enid Blyton
5,264 books6,458 followersSee also:
Ένιντ Μπλάιτον (Greek)
Enida Blaitona (Latvian)
Энид Блайтон (Russian)
Inid Blajton (Serbian)
Інід Блайтон (Ukrainian)
Enid Mary Blyton (1897–1968) was an English author of children's books.
Born in South London, Blyton was the eldest of three children, and showed an early interest in music and reading. She was educated at St. Christopher's School, Beckenham, and - having decided not to pursue her music - at Ipswich High School, where she trained as a kindergarten teacher. She taught for five years before her 1924 marriage to editor Hugh Pollock, with whom she had two daughters. This marriage ended in divorce, and Blyton remarried in 1943, to surgeon Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters. She died in 1968, one year after her second husband.
Blyton was a prolific author of children's books, who penned an estimated 800 books over about 40 years. Her stories were often either children's adventure and mystery stories, or fantasies involving magic. Notable series include: The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Five Find-Outers, Noddy, The Wishing Chair, Mallory Towers, and St. Clare's.
According to the Index Translationum, Blyton was the fifth most popular author in the world in 2007, coming after Lenin but ahead of Shakespeare.
See also her pen name Mary Pollock
Ένιντ Μπλάιτον (Greek)
Enida Blaitona (Latvian)
Энид Блайтон (Russian)
Inid Blajton (Serbian)
Інід Блайтон (Ukrainian)
Enid Mary Blyton (1897–1968) was an English author of children's books.
Born in South London, Blyton was the eldest of three children, and showed an early interest in music and reading. She was educated at St. Christopher's School, Beckenham, and - having decided not to pursue her music - at Ipswich High School, where she trained as a kindergarten teacher. She taught for five years before her 1924 marriage to editor Hugh Pollock, with whom she had two daughters. This marriage ended in divorce, and Blyton remarried in 1943, to surgeon Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters. She died in 1968, one year after her second husband.
Blyton was a prolific author of children's books, who penned an estimated 800 books over about 40 years. Her stories were often either children's adventure and mystery stories, or fantasies involving magic. Notable series include: The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Five Find-Outers, Noddy, The Wishing Chair, Mallory Towers, and St. Clare's.
According to the Index Translationum, Blyton was the fifth most popular author in the world in 2007, coming after Lenin but ahead of Shakespeare.
See also her pen name Mary Pollock
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 29, 2020
This book, ordered from a flimsy Scholastic catalogue, launched a lifelong myth obsession.
June 24, 2022
Hark, foolish mortals!
For you risk treading the path of misadventures already walked by the unwise Greeks of ancient times!
Unless you crack open this book and learn from their mistakes, that is.
Jokes aside, this is a great introduction for the little tikes to a world of wonder while gaining great insights into the value of ethics & morals.
As a kid with hands-off parents, my own sense of justice and honor came from books I personally selected myself. It was a great time to read books, books that espouse honesty, industriousness, and kindness.
Nowadays, with books written intentionally to poison young minds under the guise of progressiveness, you as a parent would no longer have the luxury to be hands-off like mine had. Choose your kid's reading materials carefully. Choose this book.
For you risk treading the path of misadventures already walked by the unwise Greeks of ancient times!
Unless you crack open this book and learn from their mistakes, that is.
Jokes aside, this is a great introduction for the little tikes to a world of wonder while gaining great insights into the value of ethics & morals.
As a kid with hands-off parents, my own sense of justice and honor came from books I personally selected myself. It was a great time to read books, books that espouse honesty, industriousness, and kindness.
Nowadays, with books written intentionally to poison young minds under the guise of progressiveness, you as a parent would no longer have the luxury to be hands-off like mine had. Choose your kid's reading materials carefully. Choose this book.
May 30, 2020
Something just reminded me of this book that I read 50+ years ago, I had a hardback with a red cover and read it again and again. It was a very important book in my childhood. It led me on to read many other mythologies. I loved it. I can't quite give it 5 stars but I'm sure I would have done when I was 8 years old.
April 8, 2020
Never gonna get tired of Ancient Greece stories, but these stories just remind us how wicked and fallen in sin men are, and that is why the gods and heroes they create are also fallen and evil just like them.
January 31, 2018
Retellings of old Mediterranean myths- Greek in origin, but the Roman names are used. Short story form for readaloud- kid friendly for bedtime.
September 16, 2013
A collection of sixteen stories from Greek myths (mostly taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses), retold for juveniles. Some, such as Icarus’ fall and King Midas’ wish, are extremely familiar, while a few have not permeated as deeply into our popular culture (Clytie who loved Apollo and watched his passage each day; Baucis and Philemon, who were kind to the gods in disguise and were thus the only ones to survive the mass drowning of their village – a story much more familiar in its Judeo-Christian frame).
This thin, 104-page book is a readable, fun introduction to some of the more colorful tales of Greek myth. Blyton is a fine writer, and adds color, mood, and motive to the tales. Most deal with the consequences of hubris (Arachne, Phaeton) or the simple misfortune of having caught the eye of a god (Io, Daphne, Midas, Persephone). The “morals” of these tales, if they could be said to have a lesson and not simply serve to explain the natural world, seem mostly to be that bad things come to those who don’t know their place. This is not a moral that American youth are brought up to find tasteful, but Blyton strives to put a happy face on even the most tragic of tales, concluding that Orpheus and Eurydice were reunited eternally in death, or casting the tale of Pygmalion and Galatea as a happily-ever-after story.
This thin, 104-page book is a readable, fun introduction to some of the more colorful tales of Greek myth. Blyton is a fine writer, and adds color, mood, and motive to the tales. Most deal with the consequences of hubris (Arachne, Phaeton) or the simple misfortune of having caught the eye of a god (Io, Daphne, Midas, Persephone). The “morals” of these tales, if they could be said to have a lesson and not simply serve to explain the natural world, seem mostly to be that bad things come to those who don’t know their place. This is not a moral that American youth are brought up to find tasteful, but Blyton strives to put a happy face on even the most tragic of tales, concluding that Orpheus and Eurydice were reunited eternally in death, or casting the tale of Pygmalion and Galatea as a happily-ever-after story.
March 20, 2015
I must have been about 8 when I read this, so my memory of it is a little faded, but I do recall that it was a book that both kindled and sated my childhood obsession with Greek mythology. As a kids' book, it does of course sanitise some of the myths out of necessity - rapes become kidnappings or trysts, and lovers who die together are shown happily reunited in the afterlife - but it's not done in such a way that the original narrative is lost. I'd be quite interested to dig out my old copy - which I think must be from the '70s - and see how it compares to the stories as I now know them. Nonetheless, I can quite certainly attribute this book as being the spark that set off a lifelong fascination. Thanks, Enid. You're a pal.
March 16, 2008
read for Katie's book group. it was fun to revisit these tales that have so many connections to modern times.
November 29, 2016
a good group of introductory tales into the myths of ancient greece.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews