She's All That!: A Look-It-Up Guide to the Goddesses of Mythology Book

If you love Greek mythology then this is the book for you! The author captures the life of a Greek Goddess and the myth of how she was created, using great text and fun illustrations. The author also wrote Oh my Gods: A Look-it-up Guide to the Gods of Greek Mythology, and What a Beast: a Look-it-up Guide to the Monsters and Mutants of Mythology and I loved those titles as well.

Reviewed by Debbie Hersh, Library Operations - Circulation, Vernon Area Public Library

I picked this book up because it was one of the few my library had on Greek myths. The tone of this book was really fun! Each page is topped with bright text, and has bright illustrations. Each Goddess is introduced with a sassy tagline and a paragraph where she "speaks" to the readers. I have never seen Goddesses handled this way, and it made the topic light and fun. It was definitely an entertaining read.

I DO have some issues with the book, though. First, I would love to know why they decided to include which Goddesses they did. Clearly, the Greek religion was a large one, with thousands of important figures. However, I think some of the "major" ones were not included, and could have easily been added, without making the book super lengthy. I think this is especially true with certain deities who were mentioned in other Goddess' profiles, but never fleshed out on their own. I loved Greek myths as a child, but am new to it as an adult, so perhaps this assumption is wrong, but some of the deities that were included are historically less influential than others. I was surprised to see Iris and Selene included, for example, instead of Hecate.

I did have a few issues with the text in the book. First, the netspeak was too much for me! (But I don't know if that is an actual issue or just my age!) Second, in each Goddess' profile, a section of myths is included. I thought these were good, but brief, introductions to numerous myths for each Goddess - and "less important" myths were often included. However, one profile will tell a myth a certain way - and another will interpret the same myth in an opposite way. This happened a few times throughout the book and I didn't appreciate it. My final complaint would be about the adult themes in Greek mythology, and how they were handled. Greek myth was filled with the concepts of virginity, sex, and rape. I can understand that this would be difficult to approach in a children's book, especially one that you want to be BOTH educational and age-appropriate. But I thought the author really skimped out on this aspect. She lazily equates "purity" to "not having a boyfriend." In instances where Zeus and Pan disguise themselves to become close to, and rape, a woman, the story was told like this: "Male God is attracted to Goddess and wants to date her. She says no. He disguises himself so he can trap/attack her." I think the author really had lazy/poor explanations for the plots, so the rape was apparent. I think if you wanted to include this, and make it appropriate for a younger audience (although I do not know if a younger audience cannot handle that discussion,) you needed to be a little more active with your story telling.

Other aspects of the book seemed a little lazy. Each profile has a bar that describes friends/foes, and each one has an icon. I felt a lot of these were really badly done/in some instances, it seemed like the icon wasn't really done at all. Also, there are numerous pictures of Greek/Roman statues throughout. They have sunglasses and bikinis VERY badly photoshopped on them, totally ruining the artistic beauty of the statues. I was also offended that they censored them - really, these classic statues are too flashy for childrens' eyes? If you have to censor them, do a better job, or perhaps just don't include them, since you're making it difficult to appreciate the art anyway.

I did really enjoy the tone of this book, and I learned a lot about the Greek Goddesses - including some new facts about Persephone, which is what I came to the book for. I also enjoyed that each Goddess was listed with some related symbols, which makes it good for new Wiccans/Pagans/Pagan kids coming to this book. But I felt there were a lot of serious flaws. If these flaws were addressed in the other books in the series, I think this could be a perfect and different way to portray the myths!