Homer's 'The Odyssey': Making an Epic Kid Friendly!

Welcome to our first Poppins Book Nook for 2014!

We are excited to be joining an awesome group of bloggers for this month's theme, Greek Myths. As always the end of our post you will find a great giveaway sponsored by +E.H.M. Member's Only Website . Please also be sure to check out all the other great books and activities from the that went on in the group this month.

Our eldest daughter has become a real fan of history and loves the Greek Myths we are studying this year. By chance I discovered that Mary Pope Osborne (Magic Tree house series) had written an abridged version of Homer's The Odyssey. It is in two volumes Tales from the Odyssey, Part 1 and Tales from the Odyssey, Part 2. Ms. Osborne does an amazing job to make it exciting and readable for 8-12 year olds while still staying true to the story.

Miss K, 8, sat glued to the first book for most of the day. By the evening she was trying to convince me to download the second book, in ebook format, so she wouldn't have to wait for the library to open.

Thankfully I saved $4.50 by diverting her attention to thinking about a project she might like to do about the Odyssey. Apparently the audio book is really good too so hopefully we can borrow that from the library soon!

The next day Miss K began working on a pop-up book to retell her favorite parts of book.

I asked her if maybe she could summarize the plot for other kids.

An 8 year old summarizes Homer's Odyssey

'It is about a man named Odysseus who is trying to sail him to his family. He goes to sleep a lot and leaves his friends in charge. These men are not clever and they cause them to get shipwrecked a lot' when prompted a little more she went on to describe lots of mythical creatures and all the things that Odysseus has to do to get past them alive'. It is really exciting and kind of gross!