For example, Elysium (a Greek version of Heaven) is portrayed as a perpetual rock concert, while in the Asphodel Meadows (a kind of middle ground afterlife), spirits are forced to write out a spelling list.
Sheila Murnaghan of the University of Pennsylvania wrote:The new classic status of myth collections, and the impulse to attack them in order to be popular, is well illustrated by the "Myth-O-Mania" books, a series for young readers (the recommended age range is 9-12) by Kate McMullan, published by Hyperion in 2002 and 2003, beginning with the first title, Have a Hot Time, Hades!, going through Phone Home, Persephone!, Keep a Lid on it, Pandora!, Stop That Bull, Theseus!, and others, to the final volume, Go For the Gold, Atalanta!.
As these titles show, the tone of the books is jokey, and they derive much of their punch from the juxtaposition of classical figures with aggressively modern idioms and situations.
The narrator is Hades, whose mission is to correct the lies of his little brother Zeus, whom he regularly characterizes as "a total myth-o-manic," which is "old Greek-speak for 'big fat liar'" (v).
And the conceit that canonical myths are shaped by Zeus' self-promoting agenda conveys a sophisticated sense of the vagaries of transmission and of the role of the victorious and powerful in determining the success of a given variant.McMullan's designs on her child readers are confused and contradictory.
[6] In the American Classical League's journal, Sharon Kazmierski noted: Kate McMullan has a nifty new series out entitled "Myth-O-Mania" that will definitely appeal to the middle school setting.
Hades has had it with all the lies told in the Big Fat Book of Mythology and has decided to set the story straight about his egotistical sibling.
There is a rather tongue-in-cheek chapter about the first Olympic games, in which Artemis, of course, competes in the archery competition, while Demeter has made weeding an official sport.
in which the boastful Hades (whose ego is as big as the world) sets the record straight about Pandora and the box she couldn't resist opening.
These revisions are presented not as primary narratives, but as corrections of false stories promulgated by a self-regarding Zeus in The Big Fat Book of Greek Myths.
By the early twenty-first century, the children's myth collection has become so established a form that it turns to self-parody in order to provide its child audience with a fresh experience of the pleasures of classical mythology.