Title Treasury of Norse Mythology Series --- Author Donna Jo Napoli Illustrator Christina Balit Publisher National Geographic Kids - 2015 First Printing National Geographic Kids - 2015 Category Mythology Warnings None Main Characters Odin, Loki, Thor, Freya, Frey, etc Main Elements Gods, giants, dwarves

Classic stories and dazzling illustrations of gods, goddesses, heroes and monsters come to life in a stunning tableau of Norse myths, including those of the thunder god Thor, the one-eyed god and Allfather Odin, and the trickster god Loki. The lyrical storytelling of award-winning author Donna Jo Napoli dramatizes the timeless tales of ancient Scandinavia. This book is the third in the trilogy that includes the popular National Geographic Treasury of Greek Mythology and National Geographic Treasury of Egyptian Mythology.

I was just poking around the kids section of the library when I stumbled across this and went "Oh wow, National Geographic, should be good". It was also pleasantly full of brightly coloured illustrations.

Then as I was adding it to my to read list on Goodreads I saw a bunch of negative reviews. We'll I've seen that before where people complain that things are too dumbed down or simplistic, but this was for kids after all so I shrugged it off.

But they were right, the writing is pretty terrible. I've read the translated Eddas, I've read Neil Gaiman's retellings, I've read bits from Bulfinch and Hamilton, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the stories. However I still found them weirdly hard to understand, in fact it would have been a huge improvement if it were "dumbed down" for the kids. The tales didn't flow, the writing felt choppy. And the little bubbles beside the text tended to distract more than add anything. And the artwork...there are moments when it's beautiful, and other moments when it's the ugliest human being I've ever seen...and we're talking about the artist's rending of Balder here, the most beautiful of all the gods. This artist cannot draw humans face on, they are vaguely Picaso-esque, yet not distorted enough to be abstract art, just distorted enough to be disturbing and unappealing. The colours are nice and bright though, and some pictures are still quite nice, even the humanoids as long as they are seen from the side.

Thus let's just say I was a bit disappointed. The one bonus is that there were stories I hadn't heard before, like the one about Heimdal sleeping with a bunch of old grandma's and creating three bloodlines of slaves, peasants and kings...which is kinda icky, but then the Norse tales are pretty nasty. Loki tied up with the intestines of his children with snake venom driping on his face, not your standard bedtime stories. I had to laugh at the end of the Heimdal tale where the author writes "and so all the royalty can claim lineage from the gods" as if she had already forgotten that she just wrote that the peasants and slaves all had the exact same source?

Now, I haven't finished reading it, but a collection of tales like this are likely to be consistent in writing style and artwork so other then taking pleasure in reading an unfamiliar tale, I don't expect things to improve.

There are better books out there. Gaiman's book may not have pictures, may not even be targeted for kids, but they read as if they were stories, something to be read by the fireside. This book reads like someone trying to do a recap and instead of telling the story, instead tells us about the story.

There are two other books in the set, Egyptian and Greek, but unfortunately the same pairing of author/artist. The Egyptian one could work (the art style is generally side-on, and the tales are so fragmented to start with the writing style might not clash so much), but I see the Greek one getting plenty of bad reviews too.