Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales introduces young readers to six classic stories taken from Greek mythology and first narrated in the celebrated Greek myths: “The Minotaur,” “The Pygmies,” “The Dragon’s Teeth” “Circe’s Palace,” “The Pomegranate Seed” and “The Golden Fleece.”

Hawthorne’s objective was to make these ancient myths accessible to contemporary children, to "raise the intellect and fancy to the level of childhood, in order to re-create the original myths."

In recasting these tales, then, Hawthorne has made something new and rather glorious out of them.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864), one of the greatest authors of the nineteenth century, transformed the art of fiction. The author of numerous novels and short stories, including The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, he was an acknowledged master of the form, and admired for his explorations of ancestral sin, guilt, and the concept of justice.