Terry Jones, best known as part of Monty Python’s team, wrote this story for his young son after going to an exhibition about Vikings at the British Museum. Deciding the Icelandic epics were a little difficult to read, he decided to tell the Sagas in a way that would be interesting to younger readers, filled with action, strange adventures, monsters, and magic.  This is the 30th Anniversary Edition of the story of Erik, who is compelled to find the land where the sun goes at night, even though no one who has attempted the journey has successfully returned. The rest of the book relates his adventures in chapters that can be read individually as separate adventures so younger readers do not have to tackle the whole book at once; a teacher could easily read one adventure at a time aloud to a class. Jones strikes a balance between the formal storytelling tone of ancient myths and language accessible to modern school age children. When Erik returns home after his voyage, he tells the people of his village, ” We have faced the Dragon of the North Sea, we have three times tricked the Old Man of the Sea, we have been turned to stone…and we have been to the edge of the world and over it…” The tales of those adventures and more, including how he defeats Death in a game of chess, make up the book. This is a wonderful addition to the mythology section of a school library. This book would be a good next step for students who read D’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths.

A wonderful, tongue-in-cheek encyclopedia of gods from all over the world by the creators of godchecker.com. The book is set up by region and provides a short biography of all of the most important gods of the area with loads of dirt, too. The Celtic goddess Sheela-Na-Gig? The goddess of fertility is “lewd, rude, nude and very crude, displaying her most intimate parts to scare away death” and there is picture of her doing just that. Not a bad reference for high school mythology students.