The book is divided into mini chapters in the form of character profiles. These are:

• Gaia – How creation took place and how Gaia chose Uranus as her husband.
• Uranus – How Uranus became angered at his children and imprisoned them all. How Gaia asked her children to attack Uranus. 
• Cronus – How Cronus married Rhea and ate his own children. How Rhea tricked him.
• Zeus – How Zeus overthrew his father, recruited his siblings for the war against the Titans and fought the monster Typhon.
• Hestia – How Hestia hid for most of the Titan war, feared her brother Zeus and became goddess of hearth and home. 
• Poseidon – How Poseidon loved the sea and married Medusa. 
• Athena – How Zeus married Metis and swallowed her. How Athena was born from Zeus’ head. 
• Hades – How Hades obsessed over justice, defeated Cronus and declared himself god of the Underworld. 
• Demeter – How Zeus married Demeter. How Hades fell in love with Persephone and obtained the help of Zeus and Gaia to abduct her. How Demeter searched for Persephone and how Persephone was returned for two-thirds of the year. 
• Apollo – How Zeus married Leto and how Leto suffered in childbirth.
• Artemis – The childhood of Artemis and how Artemis and Apollo punished Niobe. 
• Hera – How Hera obsessed over Zeus and won him. How Hera was angered at the birth of Athena and created Hephaestus from herself. 
• Hephaestus – How Hera cast out Hephaestus and how Thetis reared him. How Hephaestus became a smith and fell in love with Athena but was spurned.
• Aphrodite – How Aphrodite sprung up from the foam. How Zeus married her to Hephaestus and how Hephaestus made her a magic belt.
• Hermes – How Zeus slept with Maia. How Hermes invented the lyre and stole Apollo’s cattle. How the two brothers became friends. 
• Ares – How Ares disappointed his parents and how he began an affair with Aphrodite. 
• Helios – How Helios worked with Prometheus to create men. 
• Selene – How Selene struggled with shyness, causing the phases of the moon. How she fell in love with Endymion.   
• Dionysus – How Zeus fell in love with Semele. How Dionysus punished Pentheus. 
• Perseus – How Zeus fathered Perseus and how Perseus and his mother were put out to sea. How Perseus slew Medusa and rescued Andromeda. 
• Orion - How Orion was given the gift to walk on water by his father Poseidon. How Orion was blinded and healed and became friends with Artemis. How Apollo tricked Artemis into killing Orion. 
• Heracles – The labours of Heracles and his death at the hands of his wife. 
• Jason – How Jason searched for the golden fleece and how Medea helped him. How Jason deserted Medea and she took revenge. 
• Theseus – How Theseus travelled to Athens to meet his father. How he set out to slay the Minotaur. How Theseus abandoned Ariadne and how he kidnapped Helen. 
• Helen – How Eris caused strife between the goddesses. How Paris seduced Helen. The Trojan War.

A great deal of the anthology is devoted to elements from Hesiod – creation, Gaia’s union with Uranus, Cronus’ rule and swallowing of his children and the war with the Titans. The later part of the anthology retells other well-known stories, such as those of Perseus, Heracles and the Trojan War. 

To some extent, the focus on Hesiod is reflective of publishing trends of the twenty-first century. Whilst nineteenth and twentieth century anthologies of Greek myth often omitted Uranus and Cronus’ overthrow by their sons entirely, this seems to have changed more recently. Lucy Coats’ 2002 anthology is an early part of this trend, but Napoli’s version is more reminiscent of Riordan’s 2014 anthology Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods or Stephen Fry’s 2017 anthology aimed at adults. All three of these devote a great deal of space to Uranus and Cronus and their family relations. They also attempt to show how the children of these gods are shaped by their abusive upbringing. Indeed, recent YA and children’s novelisations have followed this trend by making Cronus the villain come back to hurt his children and destroy what they have built. These include Riordan’s Percy Jackson novels, Carter’s YA romance series The Goddess Test and Solomon’s Zeus. The popularity of these themes compared to the relative silence on Cronus in anthologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries probably relates to an increasing interest in abusive parents and dysfunctional families. There is also a likely link to more recent versions tending to portray the gods in general as cruel and weak. 

The sections on Cronus’ six children in this anthology explore how they were shaped by their childhood, abusive father and participation in the war against the Titans. For example, Hades as a baby in his father’s stomach rails against the injustice of it all and wants to punish Cronus. He subsequently becomes god of the underworld, so that he might dispense justice as his job. 

There is a very strong focus on motherhood. One example of this is Demeter who, before she is yet a mother, is described as having a shoulder that was ‘a welcoming cushion for a baby’s head’ (p.60). We are told she is appealing to Zeus as a mate because she makes him feel ‘cared for, safe – like his grandmother Gaia had made him feel’ (p.60). We are also told that Gaia senses this and resents Demeter and this is why she helps Hades abduct Persephone. Gaia is therefore jealous that Demeter’s maternal nature might be greater than hers; we see similar dynamics between Hera and Leto later on. In this version, Hera does not send Leto torment when she is trying to give birth. Instead, she tries to be Leto’s friend during her labour out of envy that Leto is pregnant by Zeus when she herself is not yet. Leto is described as having ‘lovely tresses’ (p. 67) and this association of motherhood with beauty is continued when Napoli says of Helen that ‘Motherhood only served to make her eyes appear deeper, her cheeks fuller – she was altogether more beautiful’ (p. 174).  

At times, this emphasis on great nurturing mother goddesses, with men as either their literal or spiritual sons perhaps borders on a biologically deterministic positioning of men and women as essentially very different. It seems possible that Napoli may have been inspired by the controversial theory of the great goddess, i.e. that a powerful Great Mother goddess was originally the most powerful deity, with a subordinate son/consort, but that she was overthrown by more aggressive patriarchal invaders and herself placed in a subordinate role to the violent and conquering male deities of these new invaders (popularised in various forms in the writing of Graves 1940, 1948; Gimbutas 1974; Stone 1976; Daly 1978 and Eisler 1995). 

Whilst there are some hints of contemporary feminist criticism regarding elements of the ancient myths (e.g. Napoli’s complaint that the sisters of Zeus were not included in his division of the world), overall most female characters’ lives and desires revolve around having babies, being desired by men or participation in family generally. (Athena and Artemis are obvious exceptions.) This is portrayed as natural and normal. The desires of male characters seem less limited. The competition between female characters, not only in attracting men but also in bearing children and being regarded as motherly, is also notable. Overall, there does seem to be something of an idea being put forward that women’s fulfilment comes from playing a nurturing, maternal role, both having babies and mothering others who are not their babies. 

This anthology engages with contemporary trends regarding the sympathetic monster figure. The character of Medusa is particularly noteworthy. Like the authors of many other recent children’s anthologies, Napoli rewrites rape scenes from myth to be consensual. Thus, rather than being raped by Poseidon, Medusa now forms a consensual relationship with and marries him. However, Napoli goes further than this, seemingly using Medusa’s character to push a didactic message about appearance. 

Here, Medusa is not transformed into a hideous gorgon as punishment. She has always been a gorgon, and Poseidon is attracted to her for her unusual features. Perseus’ rash promise to bring Polydectes the gorgon’s head and subsequent killing of Medusa are presented as acts of cruelty. The Grey Sisters are also presented sympathetically. The fact that Perseus is forcing them to betray the whereabouts of their sister in order to kill her is emphasised, something downplayed in other versions. In some ways, this resembles Kate McMullan’s Say Cheese, Medusa! (2002). However, Napoli goes further than McMullan in her portrayal of unconventional appearance as attractive and her deconstruction of the idea of the ‘ugly monster’. One might feel ambiguously about her choice to do this through the characters of a mythological rapist and his victim. However, it is notable the extent to which even recent anthologies of Greek myth implicitly equate beauty with goodness and ugliness with monstrosity, and imply that female beauty in particular is a measure of a woman’s worth. Some attempt to rectify this trend, therefore, is welcome. 

Balit’s colourful illustrations display a worldly style. The theme of motherhood is continued in the almost Madonna-like image of Leto with her twin babies after giving birth (p.68) and in Medusa and Selene’s maternal poses with their lovers. On page 45, Medusa cradles Poseidon from behind; his eyes are closed and he leans against her, head beneath her chin. On pages 116-117, Selene spreads her arms around Endymion; his head is in her lap and he emerges from the folds of her cloak in a pose almost reminiscent of childbirth.

Crew, H.S., Donna Jo Napoli: Writing with Passion. Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature, No. 39. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2010.