Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Beautiful Stories of Life: Six Greeks Myths, Retold
    The Beautiful Stories of Life: Six Greeks Myths, Retold
    The Beautiful Stories of Life: Six Greeks Myths, Retold
    Audiobook1 hour

    The Beautiful Stories of Life: Six Greeks Myths, Retold

    Written by Cynthia Rylant

    Narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Winner of the Newbery Medal, Cynthia Rylant has also received the Caldecott Award and numerous other honors. In The Beautiful Stories of Life, Rylant vividly retells the Greek myths of Pandora, Pygmalion, Narcissus, Perse-phone, Orpheus, and Psyche. Exploring classic themes of love, destruction, vanity, and redemption, these tales will introduce young readers to the exciting world of Greek mythology.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 8, 2009
    ISBN9781440719141
    The Beautiful Stories of Life: Six Greeks Myths, Retold
    Author

    Cynthia Rylant

    Cynthia Rylant is the author of more than 100 books for young people, including the beloved Henry and Mudge, Annie and Snowball, Brownie & Pearl, Motor Mouse, and Mr. Putter & Tabby series. Her novel Missing May received the Newbery Medal. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

    More audiobooks from Cynthia Rylant

    Related to The Beautiful Stories of Life

    Related audiobooks

    Children's For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Pandora’s Box

      Dec 2, 2020

      Pandora’s Box
      3 min read

    • Article

      Gods Of Egypt

      Sep 7, 2023

      Gods Of Egypt
      12 min read

    • Article

      Gaia, the Scientist: What if the first woman scientist was simply the first woman?

      Dec 29, 2021

      Happy Holidays. In this special issue we are reprinting our top stories of the past year. This article first appeared online in our “Universality” issue in April, 2021. There exists a social hierarchy within science that strikes people who are not mi

      7 min read

    • Article

      Gaia, the Scientist

      Apr 7, 2021

      There exists a social hierarchy within science that strikes people who are not mixed up in it as ridiculous. It goes like this: Mathematicians are superior to Physicists, who are, in turn, superior to Chemists, who are of course, superior to Biologis

      7 min read

    • Article

      How the Lark Got Her Crest

      May 30, 2023

      How the Lark Got Her Crest
      15 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2023

      Mythological Creature Ryan Coppa, age 9 Shaker Heights, OH The Day with Cerberus “But it’s unfair!” I protested. “For the last time, no World Series tickets,” Dad explained. I stomped to my room, not turning back. When I entered my room, I saw a m

      11 min read

    • Article

      Orpheus and Eurydice

      Dec 25, 2023

      Orpheus and Eurydice
      2 min read

    • Article

      Greek Gods

      May 19, 2022

      Greek Gods
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Odyssey and the Other

      Nov 14, 2017

      The Odyssey and the Other
      6 min read

    • Article

      Orpheus And Eurydice

      Feb 5, 2020

      Orpheus And Eurydice
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Symposium On The Mysterious

      Sep 1, 2023

      A Symposium On The Mysterious
      24 min read

    • Article

      Eating the Fruit

      Sep 12, 2017

      Over the centuries, there have been innumerable interpretations of the story of Adam and Eve. This week on the Daily, Stephen Greenblatt, the author of The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, retells some of these legends in modern idiom, and invents a fe

      4 min read

    • Article

      Theatre

      Mar 8, 2023

      Theatre
      3 min read

    • Article

      Growing Up With the Odyssey

      Aug 7, 2017

      Growing Up With the Odyssey
      7 min read

    • Article

      GODS, MEN & monsters

      Jun 11, 2019

      GODS, MEN & monsters
      4 min read

    • Article

      Greek Tragedies Like Medea Are An Ethical Nightmare. That’s Why We Need Them | Charlotte Higgins

      Mar 11, 2023

      Last week, I found myself – at the end of a gloomy day – shot through with a burst of fierce, electric energy. It came from watching Sophie Okonedo’s 90 minutes of flat-out fury as she played Medea, opposite Ben Daniels’s Jason, in Dominic Cooke’s pr

      5 min read

    • Article

      Shikondo Tales

      Sep 7, 2018

      Shikondo Tales
      3 min read

    • Article

      Sex in the Garden

      Sep 14, 2017

      Sex in the Garden
      5 min read

    • Article

      10 Literary Witches To Hex Trump

      Mar 24, 2017

      In case you hadn’t heard, witches across America—including Lana Del Rey—are uniting to take down Trump via a binding spell, which calls on the spirits to keep the President from doing harm (it already seems to be working). Covens, communities, and so

      5 min read

    • Article

      Front And Centre

      Jan 10, 2021

      From their earliest recorded appearance to modern times, a relatively small number of prominent female characters – human, divine or, confusingly, both – have been handed down through the best-known, endlessly retold Greek myths. Most storytellers (u

      2 min read

    • Article

      Phryne c371-316 BC

      Feb 15, 2024

      Phryne c371-316 BC
      2 min read

    • Article

      Ursula K. Le Guin

      Jun 15, 2018

      He was thinking of Lookfar, abandoned long ago, beached on the sands of Selidor. Little of her would be left by now, a plank or two down in the sand maybe, a bit of driftwood on the western sea. As he drifted near sleep he began to remember sailing t

      15 min read

    • Article

      Gaia The Earth Mother

      Sep 6, 2023

      Gaia The Earth Mother
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Beautiful Stories of Life

    3/5

    24 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Mercifully short. But every third sentence jarred.
    • 3/5
      This book retells 6 myths of the Greek mythology stories of life. The book discusses Pandora, Persephone, Orpheus, Pygmalion, Narcissus, and Psyche. I particularly enjoyed this book, because most of the information presented was new to me! I know very little about mythology in general, so I was very intrigued by the content. I think the book was well written for 5, 6 and 7 graders to grasp the concept of the myth, without having to have prior knowledge about mythology. My favorite of these stories was the one about Pandora's box; and the importance of patience, and not always giving in to desire. I think the language is very whimsical, and the illustrations, while sparing, are quite pretty and definitely add to the myths.
    • 3/5
      This beautiful, though small, collection of Greek Myths cover the basics of life and love in the ancient greek belief system. The sparse, though lovely, illustrations complement the storytelling. Stories included: Pandora, Persephone, Orpheus, Pygmalion, Narcissus, and Psyche.
    • 2/5
      This book presents six greek myths ranging from why darkness and hope are a part of the world to the danger of extreme obsession to fighting battles inside ones self. Each myth is written plainly and accompanied with a few drawings to help communicate the story.Genre: MythsCritique: This book is a good example of myths because they portray themselves as stories of the distant past and try to explain the origin of inexplainable events and relationships between gods and humans. For example, in the first myth, Pandora, the story tries to explain the origin of suffering and hope and the relationship between the gods, man and woman.
    • 5/5
      Many of these myths have a morbid quality about them that may shock a child, such as death because of self-destructiveness and selfishness even when love is there in the example of the myth “Narcissus.” The art is culturally aligned I feel since it’s supposed to go hand in hand with something that has been around a long time from ancient Greek culture. So, it would make sense that these illustrations would be in gray, black and white and pencil drawn with a lot of details to help the child’s mind keep them in focus. With the pencil line detail like I described, that I described, there is a lot of drawing around words, like tall reeds, simple flowers, and bullfrogs. In the myth “Pandora’s Box” there is a full realistic sketch of Pandora and Zeus, with Zeus giving Pandora her box. I feel the art is chosen carefully and not overdone. It has a very Eden-like quality and the characters all wear togas.
    • 2/5
      Six myths are retold in this book; Pandora, Persephone, Orpheus, Pygmalion, Narcissus and Psyche, the beautiful Greek myths are simplified to a form that talks down to the reader and does a disservice to the myths. Clearly the author hopes that this will make them more accessible but instead its rather jarring to read the sort of repetition that would feel more comfortable in a picture book in a almost chaptered book. A disappointing read from a book that held a great amount of possibility since the vocabulary is possible for an early reader of about 10 or 12 but the style of writing is not interesting and so the stories lose their interest. The illustrations that are added are not colorful and don't have much action to them so they don't really add anything to the story. Overall this is a disappointing book.