Customer Reviews

One-Hundred-and-One Celtic Read-Aloud Myths & Legends

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is excellent selection to read to children at bedtime. Each short story takes only ten minutes to read to your child and you can send them off to sleep with dreams of faraway places. Tales of Greek and Roman origin as well as cultural stories of Native Americans will educate and entertain your children. I have found that reading these short stories to my children at bedtime to be a fun and enjoyable experience. There are a few of these typse of storybooks in the series. My children also enjoy 101 Read-Aloud Classics.

After giving my children an enthusiastic taste for mythology with the D'Aulaires' superb books on Greek and Norse mythology, this seemed the logical next step. Unfortunately, it is nowhere near as well written.

This is not to fault its range; all of the great stories of Celtic myth are here, and many of them contain elements able to excite children. But it is poorly structured, with several characters turning up in integral roles some considerable number of pages before their own origins and attributes are properly explained in tales placed later in the book. The pacing of the stories is also odd - it feels like someone has transcribed from the original poems and made little effort to restructure the narrative in a suitable form, and little of the original poetry is sometimes left in the often plodding prose. A number of stories end very abruptly with little attempt at resolving things in a way children will find satisfactory. The brevity of many of the stories mean that much of the interesting narrative is simply handwaved away in a sentence or so; it's almost like some of them are presented in dot point lists. The aim of presenting stories in a form that can be told in one bedtime sitting does scant justice to many of them. Many of the stories do not in fact read aloud very well without some effort by the adult reader to remedy these faults.

If you want comprehensive coverage of the myths, or a reference to provide brief overviews of the main points of the stories then yes, this book has something to offer. But if you want retellings of these great myths done in a way that fires your kids imaginations in the way the D'Aulaires' books can, look elsewhere.

Most things labeled "Celtic" are really Irish, and maybe Scottish. This collection includes Welsh, Cornish, and Breton stories as well! Well written, great length for bedtime stories. There's no pictures, but we actually like that.

I have spent much time looking for a book that would translate the Celtic Myths for children. I am a teacher of Pagan children. This book puts the history of the Celts into language much more easily understood by the children. I plan to use it to lay out a curriculmn for our study of Celts. The book allows me to combine religion and history. The book itself is printed in large enough letters to make reading easy.

the book is just what we needed did not use yet because the post office can't tell the differance between one town or another.