A Wonder Book for Girls & Boys
Picture a group of children gathered on the porch of a New England farmhouse on a crisp autumn afternoon, begging their friend Eustace Bright to spin them a tale. This is Tanglewood, and the young storyteller obliges by transporting them straight to ancient Greece. In these six classic myths retold for young readers, Perseus conquers Medusa, King Midas learns the peril of greed, and Pandora opens her box into the world. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote A Wonder Book in 1851 with a deliberate mission: to free these ancient stories from what he called their "cold moonshine" and recast them in warm, romantic prose that children could hold close. The result is not a stuffy classical education but something far more precious, a book where mythology becomes bedtime adventure, where gods and heroes feel like old friends, and where every tale is told to a child who is listening with wide eyes. It remains the gold standard for introducing young readers to Greek myth, the kind of book that creates lifelong lovers of ancient stories.
