Category: | Our Mythical Childhood Survey

Sarah Janet Maas

A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, 2)

A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses #2) is book two of a high fantasy series in which each book takes inspiration from well-known myths or fairytales, with book two being described by the author as influenced by the myth of Hades and Persephone. The novel is published as New Adult in America, a category that explores similar themes to Young Adult, but often with more explicit sexual themes and violence. This impacts the retelling by centring the protagonist’s attraction t(...)

literary

YEAR: 2016

COUNTRY: United States of America

TAGS: Demeter Hades Persephone Seasons Underworld

Guidang Danzabe

Matching, the Rainmaker

The myth goes that one day among the Mundang people the chief’s daughters decided to go and look for walnuts and millet stalks, to fabricate vegetable salt. On their way, they arrived in the village of the wicked (devils) and everything there was strange. The sap of a cactus was the only thing to take as liquid in that land. They collected some to drink on the way. These girls, who were constantly very thirsty, finished the sap from their cactus on the way before reaching their final desti(...)

oral

COUNTRY: Chad

TAGS: African Mythologies African Storytelling African Traditions Seasons

Bob Graham

Rose Meets Mr Wintergarten

In Rose Meets Mr Wintergarten, a modern recasting of the Persephone myth, Rose Summers (Persephone) moves into a small, colourful house with her family (her mother, and her sisters, Faith and Blossom). Next door is a large, grey mansion, which the "sun never touched", in which monstrously large plants "bristle" over the fence. The children in the street tell stories about the inhabitant, Mr Wintergarten (Hades), who is "mean", and "horrible." "If your(...)

literary

YEAR: 1992

COUNTRY: Australia

TAGS: Cerberus Hades Katabasis Persephone Seasons

Roshani Chokshi

The Star-Touched Queen (Series)

The Star-Touched Queen is a young adult romantic fantasy novel that follows 17-year old Princess Maya of the Bharata Dynasty through her marriage to the Lord of “death and destruction”, and her subsequent quest to restore her fallen husband to his throne. The overarching plot mirrors the Persephone and Hades myth, while a modern update gives the Persephone figure of Maya agency and power, and transforms the Hades figure of Amar from a captor role to that of a liberator. Additionally,(...)

literary

COUNTRY: United States of America

TAGS: Demeter Hades Persephone Seasons Underworld