Little Goddess Girls – Artemis & the Awesome Animals

Artemis & the Awesome Animals by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams is a magical adventure for 7 year olds about a goddess girl who's scared of almost everything.

What happens

Artemis carries a bow and arrows everywhere. She's also frightened of peacocks, the dark, snakes and balloons (because balloons might pop). So when she and her three friends reach Sparkle City at the top of Mount Olympus, she knows exactly what she'll ask Zeus for. Courage!

Her friends want gifts too. Aphrodite would like to be easier to like. Persephone wants a cure for her bad luck. Athena just wants to go home, after a storm blew her into this magic land by mistake.

But Zeus turns out to be a grumpy giant blue balloon. And he'll only help if the girls stop Medusa, the snake-haired girl who can turn you to stone with one look. Snakes! Of course it had to be snakes.

So off they go, and it gets gloriously silly. The Gray Sisters are three chickens who share one beak between them. There's a talking signpost, a front door with a face and a shiny silver egg that's supposed to help. If the flying monkeys and the brick road ring a bell, you're not imagining it.

And it turns out Artemis has a talent she's kept quiet about. She can understand what animals are saying.

It's a short, bright story in six quick chapters, lovely for a child who's just starting to read chapter books on their own. The sentences are simple and something happens in every chapter.

What's really nice is that Artemis never stops being scared. She just keeps going anyway, with her friends' encouraging smiles behind her. For a child who worries about things, that's a kind message, and it never feels preachy.

What to read next

This isn't the girls' first trip around Mount Olympus, but the story fills you in quickly. If your reader wants to start at the beginning, Athena & the Magic Land is the first Little Goddess Girls book, where Athena is swept away from her own street and lands next to a talking signpost.