Usually, a book review from me is a good thing. I share volumes that I love and leave the ho-hum ones on the shelf. Today, however I am going to share a book that I recomend you DO NOT buy.
A few months ago, I purchased D'Aulares' Book of Norse Myths with a preface by Michael Chabon through Amazon. I can remember reading the Greek version of this book in grade school and loved it, so when I found this I thought I just had to have it. Wrong!
The book features Norse deity and their adventures, but cloaked in a very Christian bias. The preface includes some thinly veiled negativity toward our ancestral faith and the first two chapters are presented with such a Christianised slant that Superman insists they give him the creeps. Further accounts are not exactly correct, but there is little harm in them and most mythologies for children have to be edited a bit. The final chapter,however, is completely Christian propaganda and should and will be avoided at least in our house.
Since this book is paid for and on our bookshelf, I do read it to the children, but I read very slowly and do a lot of improvising. Mostly, we look at the beautiful colored pencil illustrations and tell the story's for ourselves.
With all the good books available in our time, I would certainly recomend that this not be one you spend your hard earned money on. Study the Eddas and Sagas or which ever classical stories build the framework of your faith and retell them yourself. Work as a family to create an illustrated collection of your favorite tales and bind it into an heirloom tome. You Tube has some great book binding tutorials. Teach your children, but do it on your terms.
