I was also unaccountably fond of Medusa's "headsnakes". Sure, everyone's wearing sandals, but Medusa's have the thick soles you'll see on kids' shoes today. Collins melds the old-timey with the contemporary well. They're just simple line drawings done in pencil, but they've got "it", baby. The illustrations struck me as particularly good too. What Collins is offering us here is a chance to sate the mythology-minded third to fourth grade set without having to hand them 500+ page fantasy novels.
They're out there, but you're gonna have to rip through a lot of disappointments before you find them. Early chapter books, particularly GOOD early chapter books, are as rare as four-leaf-clovers in May. The real selling point of this book, however, is that it's an early chapter book. She's certain that this will be a misery for everyone involved, but to the surprise of everyone, the trip turns out very well in the end. There's to be a class trip and Medusa's crew is stuck on a hike up Mount Olympus with, you guessed it, the Champions. Then, to top it all off, the worst possible thing happens. There's her nerdy buddy Chiron the centaur and Mino the Minotaur (perpetually late due to his maze-like house) but they're no more popular than she is.
It's not like Medusa doesn't have friends. She's particularly loathed by "The Champions", Perseus, Theseus, and Cassandra. You would think that being a Gorgon would have certain advantages, wouldn't you? Yet for Medusa Jones, the fact that she has snakes instead of hair makes her nothing but a freak in the eyes of her fellow students.
It's a fabulous concept! Taking everyone's favorite myths and plopping them smack dab in a middle school muddle, author Ross Collins creates new humor from very VERY old material. I look at it this way if you can't find humor in the idea of a kid with snakes coming out of her head then you're not considering it properly. Maybe, just maybe, I should read something fun and funny and well written and just downright bizarre. And that's all well and good for a while, but after months and months of it, a person begins to crack. When you review books for children there's a sort of assumption that if you want to be familiar with the cream of the yearly crop then you need to immerse yourself in a smattering of dead moms, deadbeat dads, anger issues, historical fiction, etc. I read a lot of "meaningful" books without wanting to.
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