More than fairy tales: why introduce a child to ancient myths

Chil­dren’s books about myths are always rel­e­vant. New — “Myths of Ancient Greece. Sto­ries of Gods, Heroes, and Mon­sters became an Ama­zon best­seller and was backed by the well-known Nation­al Geo­graph­ic com­mu­ni­ty. Let’s get acquaint­ed with the book and fig­ure out why to read sto­ries that are three thou­sand years old.

Are myths fairy tales or…?

Mythol­o­gy has more ancient roots than a fairy tale. Unlike the lat­ter, myths are close­ly relat­ed to beliefs — they reflect reli­gious cults, nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na, “trans­ferred” to the will of the deities, and every­thing that peo­ple of the III-II mil­len­nia BC. could­n’t explain.

A fairy tale is orig­i­nal­ly a fan­ta­sy, an inven­tion for the enter­tain­ment of chil­dren. An adult did not take fairy tales seri­ous­ly, but he could not imag­ine life with­out faith in his gods.

Mythol­o­gy con­tains a lot of dif­fer­ent sto­ries for all occa­sions. The ancients believed that the gods had (or could take) the appear­ance of peo­ple, and also pos­sessed human qual­i­ties ele­vat­ed to the absolute. Let’s say, if we have the god­dess of beau­ty Aphrodite in front of us, then this is per­fect beau­ty. There is no one more beau­ti­ful than her, her charms can­not be resist­ed. If Her­mes is the god of elo­quence, dex­ter­i­ty and trade, then no one will be able to deceive him, but he him­self, on the con­trary, will out­wit any­one.

The gods dif­fered from mor­tals, as a rule, in height (2–3 times high­er), cor­re­spond­ing super­pow­ers, a halo of radi­ance and immor­tal­i­ty. But pas­sions on Olym­pus were seething quite human. From here, the wise Greeks drew so many sto­ries that lat­er became canon­i­cal.

San­ta Bar­bara. Pre­quel

Why, even after thou­sands of years, adults and chil­dren read and reread the leg­ends about the exploits of Her­cules, the immor­tal Odyssey or the tales of Troy? Mythol­o­gy of Ancient Greece is the first series in his­to­ry. Think about it. The branched “fam­i­ly tree” of the ancient gods gave rise to a lot of sce­nar­ios for the devel­op­ment of events. We fol­low with curios­i­ty the inter­twin­ing of their des­tinies, new turns in their lives, tri­umphs and tragedies.

There is not a sin­gle char­ac­ter trait that would not be beat­en in the plots of myths. That is why world cul­ture, cin­e­ma and art are based on ancient Greek myths. It is an eter­nal source of inspi­ra­tion. The first school of human rela­tions.

Those who are well acquaint­ed with myths feel more deeply clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture, bet­ter under­stand the secret back­ground of the mas­ter­pieces of paint­ing or the direc­tor’s idea in cin­e­ma and the­ater. And also knowl­edge of the world epic is a sure sign of a well-edu­cat­ed per­son, edu­cat­ed and intel­lec­tu­al­ly devel­oped. The one with whom it is always pleas­ant to be in the same com­pa­ny.

That is, it is use­ful, inter­est­ing, and sim­ply nec­es­sary to study mythol­o­gy in order to be at home in a cul­tur­al soci­ety. There­fore, good books about the folk epic of dif­fer­ent coun­tries, and first of all, Ancient Greece, must be includ­ed in the home library.

Chil­dren and myths

For chil­dren, there is anoth­er val­ue in mythol­o­gy. With leg­ends, they live through all stages of grow­ing up. It is espe­cial­ly use­ful to intro­duce myths to chil­dren from 8 years old, when they begin to have ques­tions for them­selves and for the world around them. Mythol­o­gy is full of vivid and illus­tra­tive exam­ples of courage, deter­mi­na­tion, devo­tion, gen­eros­i­ty and inge­nu­ity. With her, the young read­er lives through a vari­ety of sit­u­a­tions, finds res­o­nant top­ics for him­self and answers to unasked ques­tions.

To cap­ti­vate a child, a book of myths must be of high qual­i­ty, under­stand­able and well illus­trat­ed. The myths of ancient Greece men­tioned above. Sto­ries of gods, heroes and mon­sters” are just that. Under the cov­er are col­lect­ed clas­sic sto­ries about the famous Olym­pus and its inhab­i­tants, mor­tals who were equal in val­or and strength to the gods, beau­ti­ful maid­ens and ter­ri­ble mon­sters oppos­ing the heroes. Each char­ac­ter is accom­pa­nied not only by an impres­sive leg­end, but also by ref­er­ence mate­r­i­al. The book con­nects plots with geog­ra­phy and his­to­ry, astron­o­my and ancient cul­ture — this way the child remem­bers the mate­r­i­al more eas­i­ly and traces the con­nec­tions between the nar­ra­tive and real life events.

This edi­tion is an excel­lent can­di­date for a grow­ing child’s book­shelf. And thanks to the col­or­ful, detailed illus­tra­tions, the book is tru­ly cap­ti­vat­ing. And it looks very pre­sentable. It will serve as a great hol­i­day sur­prise for read­ers aged 7–14.

Be sure to intro­duce your chil­dren to the world epic — this is a wor­thy invest­ment in their intel­lec­tu­al, aes­thet­ic and spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment.