Category: | Our Mythical Childhood Survey

Brett Helquist , Lemony Snicket

A Series of Unfortunate Events (Series, Books 1–13)

This series of thirteen 13-chaptered novels follows the "unfortunate events" which befall Violet, Klaus and baby Sunny Baudelaire after the death of their parents in a fire in the family home. On becoming orphans, the siblings are placed in the custody of their uncle, Count Olaf, who, from the first book onwards tries various – and typically murderous – ways, to acquire their huge fortune. Olaf is aided throughout by his accomplices in V.F.S., a mysterious organisation to w(...)

literary

YEAR: 1999

COUNTRY: United States of America

TAGS: Calypso Charybdis Damocles Glaucus Gorgon(s) Heracles Lotus Eaters / Lotophagoi Nero Odysseus / Ulysses Odyssey Plato Sappho Scylla

Emilka Bojańczyk , Anna Piwkowska

Frances [Franciszka]

In contemporary Warsaw, thirteen-year-old Franciszka learns that her mother, Natasza, taken to the hospital before the plot of the novel begins, is severely ill (later in the book, it turns out that she has leukemia). As the girl has been brought up only by her mother, she must go and live with her grandmother, Ewa, whom she never met. The eccentric woman, called “babsko” [a hag] by Franciszka, does not look like or behave as a grandmother should (according to the protagonist), and t(...)

literary

YEAR: 2014

COUNTRY: Poland

TAGS: Aphrodite Ariadne Kleïs Lesbos Minotaur Phaon Sappho Sicily Theseus

Margot McGovern

Neverland

When seventeen-year-old orphan Kit Learmonth tries to commit suicide by slashing her wrists in the swimming pool of her prestigious boarding school, her uncle takes her back to her childhood home to recuperate. Before her parents drowned in an accident at sea when she was ten, Kit grew up on an idyllic island owned for generations by her wealthy, infamous family. Though its official name is Learmonth Island, everyone refers to it as Neverland. In Kit’s mind, it is a place of magic and adve(...)

literary

YEAR: 2018

COUNTRY: Australia

TAGS: Andromache Celtic Mythology Charybdis Hector Homer Iliad Metamorphoses (Ovid's) Metamorphosis Monsters Norse Mythology Odysseus / Ulysses Odyssey Ovid Plato Sappho Scylla Sirens Virgil

Cynthia Voigt

The Vandemark Mummy

Phineas Hall, aged 12, and his sister Althea, aged 15, arrive on the campus of Vandemark College, where their father has taken a job teaching classical languages. Their mother has taken a high-powered political job on the other side of the US and the children are concerned about what this might mean for their parents’ marriage. A surprise bequest to the college sees Mr. Hall appointed curator of a collection of Egyptian artefacts, including a mummy from the Roman era. A line-up of potentia(...)

literary

YEAR: 1991

COUNTRY: United States of America

TAGS: Egypt Kleïs Sappho

Irini Savvides

Willow Tree and Olive

Olive Alexandropoulos is in her final year of high school at prestigious Clare College in Sydney. In spite of the support of her teachers and her best friend Kerry, she is feeling the pressure, and her ambivalence about her Greek heritage doesn’t help. When a lecture on the sexual abuse of children triggers repressed memories of being raped as a five year old by an old man in her family’s village back in Greece, Olive falls apart. Although she tries to keep her revelation hidden, an (...)

literary

YEAR: 2001

COUNTRY: Australia

TAGS: Acropolis Athens Delphi Greek Theatre Lesbos Mytilene Sappho Sounion Tragedy (Ancient)