October 29, 2018
This collection introduces characters from a broad range of world legends and myths. Briggs presents the subjects alphabetically, describing their significance within a wider mythological framework. Playful cartooning accompanies brief tales about each character as gods, mortals, and creatures battle, fall in love, and banter via dialogue balloons. Briggs frankly and sometimes humorously describes the actions of rash or vengeful deities: the Hindu goddess Kali “handled the demons like a divine vacuum cleaner, swallowing them whole.” Readers will likely recognize many of the gods and goddesses, but the chance to get to know less familiar figures is sure to spark interest. Ages 9–up.
May 15, 2018
A select dictionary of divine or semidivine warriors, victims, oafs, pranksters, bureaucrats, elementals, and prima donnas.Being alphabetically ordered from "Amaterasu" to "Zeus," the 75 entries offer only piecemeal overall pictures of some of the world's major pantheons. A system of not-very-distinctive icons and culturally stylized borders makes a stab at helping to differentiate one from the next; the table of contents is rearranged at the end to identify major figures by type and tradition, but there is no proper index to names and topics mentioned within the articles. Briggs keeps the tone light by slipping in quips ("If you remember one thing about Loki, remember this: Loki is a jerk") and poop references. He also acknowledges but tones down the sex, rape, incest, and widespread mayhem that pervade these ancient tales. He enhances his brief retellings of creation and other myths with inset descriptions of major sources for them, and he offers general observations about how gods and entire pantheons evolve or fade over time. Although figures from such living traditions as Shinto, Hinduism, and Indigenous cultures around the world appear, notably missing are any from the Abrahamic traditions, upholding a cosmological double standard. In Briggs' many neat, simply drawn cartoons, characters' faces are drawn with little differentiation in physical features, but he's careful about details of iconography and culture, and he also uses a reasonably broad palette of browns (and, for certain Hindu entities, blues) throughout for skin tones.Better suited for browsing than reference or research but fairly broad in both scope and humor. (Mythology. 10-13)
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August 1, 2018
Grades 4-7 This A-to-Z introduction to mythological beings features an international cast: there's the standard Greek, Roman, and Egyptian pantheons, but also Ugandan, Japanese, Celtic, Maori, Sumerian, and Inuit?quite a diverse representation. Each subject gets three or four pages of breezy text accompanied by witty cartoon illustrations incorporating generally snarky observations. This casual approach makes the considerable amount of accurate, detailed content go down easier, as do user-friendly features: page banners that link subjects to specific cultures, medallions that indicate status (god, hero, or creature), and standard basic facts: tradition (Canaanite, Shinto, Persian, etc.), home (Asgard, Mount Kailash, Uruk), and aliases, if any. Some entities, such as monsters, dragons, and giants, get their own articles. Definitions, trivia asides, comparison charts, and brief explanations of how current-day people know about these stories, especially from cultures that had no written language, also appear. Despite the lack of references or source notes, this oversize, richly illustrated browser's delight should spark imagination and considerable interest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)