For the reader who wants to meet the characters
D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths puts storytelling and illustration together. The current NYRB paperback description names Odin, Thor, Loki, the Valkyries and Ragnarokk, with pictures throughout. That makes it an inviting possibility for a reader whose interest began with a character but who wants to encounter a wider set of stories. It is a retelling by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire, not simply a reference list of gods.
Light pictures do not erase the dark material
Michael Chabon’s preface, published separately as After Strange Gods, describes the d’Aulaires’ Norse world as beginning and ending in darkness, with calamity and violence making its goodness more vivid. His account is a useful counterweight to assuming an illustrated children’s edition must be gentle throughout. For a gift, ask whether the reader wants mythic conflict and unsettling endings as well as fantastic beings. Familiarity with a modern superhero version does not answer that question.
A clear place on a fantasy shelf
The edition referenced here is the 2023 paperback, ISBN9781681377889, with 160 pages and Chabon’s preface. Choose it for an illustrated route into the stories, or for returning to them in this pair of artists’ telling. Someone studying the wording and translation decisions of medieval texts will need a different kind of edition beside it. The two reading pleasures can coexist without asking this book to perform both jobs.
Sources & further reading
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