A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls and Tanglewood Tales are both books written by a man named Nathaniel Hawthorn. They both have six short stories that recount different Greek myths or sections from longer myths along with an overall story in both of them, with A Wonder Book having a modern day story-teller tell a group of children about Greek myths, and Tanglewood Tales having the same story-teller show his publisher six new stories he’d like to publish as a book, which he does. Hawthorn has obviously watered down the stories and nobilized the hero’s, leaving out the (by todays standards) bad things they did and not including the often horrible deaths they had for children, since it would be bad for their role models to cheat on their wives (Jason), murder their families (Heracles, repeatedly) and so on. So I get why he did it, but it still frustrates me that he just changed the stories, often made made up large parts of the story, and left out the original moral of the story with a bit of typing. I don’t know if he intentionally or unintentionally meant for adults to believe them, but as far as I know everyone who doesn’t directly study Greek mythology believes these versions of the stories, and it frustrates me immensely. I recommend reading these books only if you have read the originals or if you plan on reading the originals, just so you know what he made up and what’s actually Greek. Otherwise, it would be better for you to remain ignorant and uncaring.
School Essays 