Children's Retellings of Classics

Gilgamesh, The Hero by Geraldine McCaughrean - a retelling of the oldest epic we've discovered, from Ancient Ur, The Epic of Gilgamesh.

The Child's Bible History by Bishop Knecht - lovely, old fashioned short retellings of Bible stories.  I found that reading language like this in short bits, acclimated my kids (and me!) to reading rich, old fashioned classics.

Aesop's Fables - Milo Winter - classic retelling with winsome illustrations.

D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths - We loved the audio version of this as well with many actors such as Paul Newman reading the different myths.

A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys and Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne- I still have fond memories of sitting out on our newly built screen porch over breakfast on summer mornings reading these stories out loud and the kids were enthralled!

Oops!  This is out of chronological order!  I should have listed this after all the Greek Stuff.

Alfred Church's The Aeneid for Boys and Girls - I read this to my middle son who loved it.  He was going through a fascination with ancient and medieval warfare.

Black Ships Before Troy and The Wanderings of Odysseus - both by Rosemary Sutcliff.  Beautifully written retellings of the Iliad and the Odyssey.  Probably for Middle Schooler/Junior High age.

The Exploits of Xenophon by Geoffrey Household - I actually didn't read this one out loud to my middle son.  I bought a copy at a used book sale (might have been Keller Books) and gave it to him since for a long time he loved to read stuff like this.  He loved it so much that I read it too and I loved.  Wonderful, tense retelling of the incredible story of Xenophon

I Marched with Hannibal by Hans Baumann - similar story to the Xenophon book.  Found this in a used book sale somewhere, gave it to my son who lapped it up.  Wonderful novel from the Carthaginian point of view.  This isn't really a retelling of a classic but a fictionalized account of the great march of elephants over the Alps.  This seems to be oop.  I wish someone would republish it!

Love Song - Translated by Sherwood Eliot Wirt- this is an abridged and simplified translation of Augustine's Confessions.  It makes a nice introduction to him for younger teens.

Beowulf, retold by Ian Serrailier. He's redacted the poem and made the language a little simpler but he keeps the flavor and rhythm so you can definitely feel like those long ago knights sitting around the fire in a dark mead hall with the wind howling outside, listening to the traveling bard sing the great and scary epic of the noble Beowulf!

Robin Hood by Ann McGovern - there are probably better retellings of this story out there; the Howard Pyle version is probably wonderful, but this is the version my kids all read.  In fact, I have a fond memory of looking for my daughter one fine day and finally finding her sitting on a log that had fallen over a stream completely absorbed in this little paperback.  I left her there to finish reading.

The Canterbury Tales retold by Geraldine McCaughrean - I like the children's version because it takes out the bawdy parts!

Stories from Dante retold by Mary McGregor - I actually read this with my daughter's class at our co-op when I was teaching The Lost Tools of Writing as well.  The neatest thing was after we read the book, we drew our version of Dante's circles of hell.  Many artists were inspired over the ages to draw this.

Here is a stack of Shakespeare plays collected over the years.  MacBeth is missing because my 12th grader is reading it right now for her co-op class.

Shakespeare Retellings - there are many versions.  We sometimes got the Leon Garfield stories out of the library.  We own the Lamb's version but my kids didn't really enjoy those.  We also had the Lois Burdett series because I had actually gone to a workshop given by her and bought the whole series.  And while the kids found them mildly interesting, the one version they really liked was E. Nesbit's.  And actually I really like the No Fear series which has modern English on one side and the original language on the other.

Don Quixote, translated by Walter Starkie - I never did get to read this out loud to my kids, to my great sorrow.  However, I can recommend it as wonderful version written by an Irish man, who translated it back in the 1950's.  He deliberately cleaned it up a bit so it could be a family read aloud.  It's a wonderful rollicking tale where the peasants of Spain all sound like Irish peasants!