Stunning!!
Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read this title in exchange for my feedback.

A wonderful book and a good edition of one of the big classics! I truly fell in love with it and with the illustrations!

What. Was. This?

I love mythology and have enjoyed most of my readings about it [even though the gods are mostly a real piece of work for sure] and therefore was looking forward to these re-tellings and the illustrations that were to accompany them [with the hopes that I could then recommend this book to teacher friends for their classrooms]. Uh, yeah, that's a no.

This was so dry and boring - I lost interest quickly [after reading the first few stories] and cannot even imagine giving this to a middle-grader to read; they would look at it and laugh at me [and do not even get me started on how difficult it was to actually read this book; the formatting was just awful and I could not enhance or enlarge the print or illustrations. VERY frustrating].

I love the classics and in the past few years have done a deep dive into them to catch up with books I missed in school and for the most part, have loved them or at least appreciated what I had read. In my opinion, this misses the mark completely - I am not sure it is a translation problem or a re-telling problem, but this is truly a boring book. I was also disappointed that there weren't more illustrations - that would have helped the book along, but in my opinion would not have saved the book.

I will not be recommending this book to anyone.

Thank you to NetGalley, Heinz Janisch - Adapter, Ana Sender, Illustrator, and NorthSouth Books for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you so much Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for honest opinion!

There are 17 stories in the book, each accompanied with one or multiple stunning illustrations. Even though I was familiar with some of them, I enjoyed the read. They were easy to understand and kids who are interested in mythology will love this book. All of the stories are intriguing but my personal favourite is the story of Narcissus. I read it several times and it never failed to amaze me. Recommended!

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

The Golden Age: Ovids Metamorphoses is a beautiful illustrated book for children giving short 3 paged retelling of a handful of Ovids Metamorphoses. The book is written at a lovely children's can understand and would make a great short story literary resource for a KS2 classroom. The only thing I found difficult to get my head around at first was why the names of the famous Greek Gods was changed to the Roman counterpart - children will be more familiar with the Greek versions than the Roman names. I guess this is because Ovid was a Roman writer? Apart from that I enjoyed these short retelling and found they're perfect for a quick read or story to discuss with your child after reading.

More than successfully filling a few holes in my education of myth, this child-friendly telling of Ovid's Metamorphoses is very pleasantly illustrated, and tells all the tales it selects from the huge original succinctly. I did wonder how the world would be repopulated after the flood, when the only man and only woman were standing around wondering what the heck to do – apparently they just unearthed rocks and threw them over their shoulders. Not all young readers will be that interested in how pan pipes came to be, and what Jupiter did with Europa, or why we have woodpeckers, but the stories barely take up three spreads, and pages are sparsely used when not illustrated anyway. The tales replace each other with quick pace. And for all the familiar legends, or the ones with less interest than others, a quirky short like the Lycian farmers is well worth admission. A strong four stars.

This is such a sweet and beautiful book retelling Ovid's Metamorphises. I thought the retellings were well done and poignant. The illustrations are absolutely stunning and complemented the stories very well. As I discussed with a friend, its interesting that the names were changed to the Roman spelling rather than the Greek but I suppose that is easier for little ones to read. Thanks for the great book!

The Golden Age” a retelling of Ovid’s METAMORPHOSIS by Heinz Janish and illustrated by Ana Sender. It isn’t going to be published till October 2022 so this is a review of the eARC which I got for free from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
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So… I love the Greek myths. I have ever since I saw Hercules in theatres when I was a kid. When the internet was new they were my obsession and I spent hours researching the myths and legends because they were at my fingertips. I even took Classics in university and studied their art and literature as part of my Bachelor of Arts. But I digress…
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This book is a collection of 17 stories from the origin of the world to the tale of Midas. Each story is only a couple pages long, and they are accompanied by beautiful illustrations. What bothered me about this retelling is that the names of the Greek Gods were replaced by their Roman equivalent— which makes sense since Ovid was a Roman writer but I still found it jarring. Other than that, I have no complaints. The myths are what they are; tales to warn and teach, and that is exactly what they do.

So I was raised on cruelly graphic books detailling the (mis)adventures of mythological heroes drawn with their pee-pees out, because I'm Greek - but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't like more updated, critical versions of (let's face it) some misogynistic ancient nonsense when its targeted at children. You can't just hand a young girl "Daphne & Apollo" and make Apollo look sympathetic in the year of our lord 2022, man.

This book has beautiful illustrations and has a wonderful retelling of creation told in Greek myth. A great introduction to Ovid for young readers and familiarized with the Greek gods and its history.

Even though its a middle grade story it can still be enjoyed by any readers. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it.

Thank you North South Book inc. & Netgalley for the ARC.


3.7/5 stars

So my initial takeaway was based on a misunderstanding on my part. I thought this was a retelling, worded & illustrated for children. Once I realized this was an illustrated classic for *adults *, it began to make more sense. Illustrations are great works of art, for sure & though the stories aren’t as vivid as other old fable retellings I’ve read (like Gaiman’s Norse Mythology), it’s still a worthy and unique book.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review

3.5/5 stars
This book contains simple, straightforward, prose re-tellings of classic myths from Ovid's Metamorphoses, including popular favorites like Daphne and Apollo, Daedalus and Icarus, Orpheus and Eurydice as well as lesser known ones such as the Creation and Great Flood, and the Story of Picus. I would recommend this book for children who have already had some exposure to Greek/Roman mythology and are already familiar with the main Olympian deities (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, etc.), since this book doesn't provide a broad introduction/overview/family tree of the gods to make the relations between various deities/mortals clearer (there is a glossary of names at the back, but a more comprehensive graphic overview in the beginning would have been really helpful to have!) The writing is simple and effective, although it doesn't capture the original poetic beauty, nuances, and wit of Ovid's original Latin text.

The Golden Age is a collection of stories from Greek and Roman myth, translated and told for children. While each story is pulled from Ovid's Metamorphoses, many are filled out with finer details and information from other interpretations of the myths.

I will echo many other reviewers in saying that some pages are full of white space that could be filled with more illustrations or simply changing the font size. I also feel like the stories could have been longer and had an overall message at the end, as some of the stories just end suddenly.

I think this is a good book to introduce children to mythology. What illustrations there are, are very beautiful. The illustrations make this collection, and I wish there were more in each story.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and NorthSouth Books for providing me with a copy for an honest review.

The Golden Age contains 17 stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses retold by Heinz Janisch.

The stories are quite short and simple but the main characters and events present. It is a fine compilation of legends and a good introduction to the world of Greek/Roman mythology for children. However I would like the stories to be chosen by more explicit theme or to be more connected between each other.

The book is illustrated by Ana Sender. First of all it was the cover with her illusrtation that caught my attention. The style of art is not close to my heart but I understand why I could have loved it in my childhood.

A great introduction to Ovid for children, accompanied by some beautiful art. Nicely done! I would have loved a book like this when I was younger as I didn’t get the opportunity to read mythology until I was in college.

I enjoyed reading this and can imagine myself as a child getting lost in the stories and illustrations. This is a nice collection of Ovid, and I read a couple of these for the first time since childhood. The sense of nostalgia was comforting. 3 stars because the book is very average. There is a lot of empty space on the pages that could have been filled in with illustration or design, which made it feel like a textbook.

This was beautiful, loved the writing and the art was lovely. I liked the storys in poetry form it made it unique (to me]. The one con about this was that the publisher property or prived the name was making the format of the intention the author wanted it choppy and it took me away from the book.

Thankyou Netgalley for providing me this e arc in exchange for an honest review

Ever since I was a kid I was fascinated by Greek/Roman Mythology. And to revisit some of the stories I knew about and to find out about lesser known stories was very exciting. I realised some stories that are well known had transformed over time like in the case of King Midas the story I had heard didn't end like the one told here, so I was glad to learn the original story.
As for the stories themselves, I liked some of them and some of them just made me angry at how arrogant the gods were, which was a bit ironic since they'd smite people for being arrogant or greedy. I guess they though it their right to be arrogant.
Like I said I have always loved greek/roman mythology but for some reason these stories didnt feel as magical as I'd hoped. I still enjoyed them but I didn't fall in love with them.
What I did fall in love with were the illustrations,they were so unique and beautiful. The artist had done a fantastic job.
I think the reason the stories fell a little flat for me was because they were too short and felt anticlimactic. Maybe if the stories were a little longer, I'd have enjoyed them more.

All in all I would give this book 3.5 stars.

We see the multifaceted world of Ovid's Metamorphoses as it retells the Story of the Origin of the World to Midas, Pan, Europa, Apollo, Daphne, Narcissus, Echo, and Fama, the goddess of rumor and stories. These stories about gods, goddesses, humans, nymphs, and other beings remind us that transformation and the power of story are never-ending. The story and illustrations are both lovely. This book would also be really cool if it was longer.

The ebook provided had significant editing issues that made it difficult to read and this fact definitely impacted my rating. There is a possibility of this rating going up upon reading a finished copy

Overall I thought this was a run-of-the-mill book about mythology. The one step up that it had (and it was a good one) was the addition of beautiful illustrations. As an art book, I think this would get a 5 out of 5, but as a collection of myths, there wasn't much that made me feel like this was anything special. I think the translation was trying to be lyrical, but it just felt stilted to me. And the movement from story to story felt really weird as if there was an effort put into making a transition but it wasn't always successful. Overall, serviceable, but uninspired.