It’s All Greek to Me

Jon Scieszka's It's All Greek to Me is a gloriously silly time-travel comedy for 8 year olds about three friends who get whisked into the Greek myths minutes before their school play.

What happens

Joe, Fred and Sam are backstage in bed-sheet togas. Fred is the Cyclops, with a paper eye pinned to his baseball cap. Sam is Orpheus with a lyre, and Joe is Paris with a gold-painted plastic apple.

Joe has also sneaked The Book into his backpack. It's the little blue book from his uncle that sends the three of them through time, and when Fred swings a tinfoil thunderbolt at Sam, it hits the backpack instead. Out comes the green mist.

Next thing they know, they're face to face with Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the underworld. Sam knows exactly one song on his lyre ("Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"). It doesn't go down well.

It only gets sillier. This isn't Greek mythology as you'd find it in a textbook. It's the boys' own version from their play, so Zeus has lost his thunderbolts and is terrified his wife will find out, and Hera cries with laughter at Sam's insults.

To get home they have to find The Book. To find The Book they have to survive a party on Mount Olympus, where Joe ends up entertaining the gods with trick questions. Then three goddesses all decide the golden apple is meant for them (and whichever one he picks, the other two will be furious).

Joe tells the story himself, and he's quite honest that it's all sort of his fault. Sam's book of snappy insults gets a real workout. There's also a marching chant for the monsters that your reader will probably be shouting round the house for a week.

The myths sneak in without anyone noticing. By the end your reader will know who Hestia is, why that golden apple is such a bad idea and what a Chimera looks like. There's a cast list at the back with how to say all the names, and instructions for making your own lyre from rubber bands.

It's an American book, so expect baseball caps, sneakers and a Ding Dong (a chocolate snack cake, and the unlikely hero of chapter three). It's the eighth Time Warp Trio adventure, but The Book gets explained in a couple of pages, so it works fine as a first one.

What to read next

Fancy more of the same daft humour? Jon Scieszka also wrote Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor. Frank is a boy inventor who tries to bring a junkyard robot to life with a lightning storm, while his best mate Watson stands by in yellow rubber gloves.