Write Your Own Myths

Write Your Own Myths showcases 20 myths, legends, and folktales from many different periods and cultures, and uses them as springboards and prompts to help you write your own versions--or point you in directions you never thought you'd go. You'll learn about all the important aspects of creative writing: * Learn about beginnings from The Sword in the Stone. * Baba Yaga's chicken house will help you get those settings believable. * Odysseus will teach you about dialogue and Loki will help you with plot. Supported with beautiful illustrations that will get your imagination flowing, there are also glossaries, tips and tricks, extra prompts, and more information about each myth or legend. The final section is packed with even more ideas for further reading and discovery. So what are you waiting for? Pick up a pen, and get creative!

An introduction to the craft of myth-writing.

Donegal, 1976 When a dolphin takes up residence in Carrig Cove, Emer and her best friend, Fee, feel like they have an instant connection with it. Then Dog Cullen and his sidekick, Kit, turn up, and the four friends begin to sneak out at midnight to go down to the beach, daring each other to swim closer and closer to the creature . . . But the fame and fortune the dolphin brings to their small village builds resentment amongst their neighbours across the bay, and the summer days get longer and hotter . . . There is something wild and intense in the air. Love feels fierce, old hatreds fester, and suddenly everything feels worth fighting for. In this beautiful, epic coming-of-age novel, an old tale is rewoven as a stunning YA story by well-known Irish author/illustrator Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick.

THE OLDEST SECRET SOCIETY OF INDIA. THE GREATEST TREASURE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. THE MOST EPIC MYSTERY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD. When the richest man of India confesses to being part of a secret society in a live press conference; chaos ensues. His daughter Aanya Vashishtha takes the help of Aarav Kohrrathi, a brilliant but egoistic treasure hunter and his friend Rehann to solve the mystery of The Ring of the Seven, a society of influential men who are tasked to protect the greatest treasure in history. What starts off as a quest to uncover her father’s secret leads them to something bigger which they themselves couldn’t have fathomed. They take the help from her father’s associate, Shayna Maheshwari, a billionaire banker and someone herself involved with the secret, as they progress towards a treasure hidden somewhere in the Himalayas. They brave bullets, puzzles, deadly chases, cult of assassins, and betrayal as their quest takes them across the length and breadth of South Asia; from the bustling metropolises of Mumbai and Delhi to the ancient temples of Nepal; from the serene beaches of Sri Lanka to the towering mountains of the Himalayas. They try to uncover a set of secret books of lost arts, which are believed to reveal the map of the treasure, and strive to discover the identities of the masters of the Ring of the Seven to solve the penultimate mystery. In a tale of love and loss, logic and emotions, religion and history, action and adventure, and the trial of a few good men against the most powerful organization in the history of mankind. Will they find the secret of the Himalayan treasure?

A write-in book which will allow children to pen their very own adventure story. With lots of hints and tips on how to create characters, plan plots, write dialogue and stage all-important action scenes, this book will start budding writers off with simple exercises, and build them up until they are racing through their own short stories.

In this comprehensive study, Enrique Florescano traces the spread of the worship of the Plumed Serpent, and the multiplicity of interpretations that surround him, by comparing the Palenque inscriptions (ca. A.D. 690), the Vienna Codex (pre-Hispanic Conquest), the Historia de los Mexicanos (1531), the Popul Vuh (ca. 1554), and numerous other texts. He also consults and reproduces archeological evidence from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, demonstrating how the myth of Quetzalcoatl extends throughout Mesoamerica.

Winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award "Stories are wondrous things," award-winning author and scholar Thomas King declares in his 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. "And they are dangerous." Beginning with a traditional Native oral story, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, gracefully elucidating North America's relationship with its Native peoples. Native culture has deep ties to storytelling, and yet no other North American culture has been the subject of more erroneous stories. The Indian of fact, as King says, bears little resemblance to the literary Indian, the dying Indian, the construct so powerfully and often destructively projected by White North America. With keen perception and wit, King illustrates that stories are the key to, and only hope for, human understanding. He compels us to listen well.

Nanabush. A name that has a certain weight on the tongue—a taste. Like lit sage in a windowless room or aluminum foil on a metal filling. Trickster. Storyteller. Shape-shifter. An ancient troublemaker with the power to do great things, only he doesn’t want to put in the work. Since coming home to Spirit Bear Point First Nation, Hazel Ellis has been dreaming of an old crow. He tells her he’s here to help her, save her. From what, exactly? Sure, her dad’s been dead for almost two years and she hasn’t quite reconciled that grief, but is that worth the time of an Algonquin demigod? Soon Hazel learns that there’s more at play than just her own sadness and doubt. The quarry that’s been lying unsullied for over a century on her father’s property is stirring the old magic that crosses the boundaries between this world and the next. With the aid of Nanabush, Hazel must unravel a web of deceit that, if left untouched, could destroy her family and her home on both sides of the Medicine Wheel.