Quote:
Originally Posted by taosaur
Also, I'm leaning heavily on series at this point and would love some individual, even *gasp* non-genre recommendations, as well as nonfiction. I'd like to get some good mythology books in there.
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Lloyd Alexander's classic "Chronicles of Prydain" tells a complete story arc in 5 readable-standalone linked novels (plus a book of short stories) and has a pretty good grounding in Welsh mythology. They're all available in Kindle versions, at least, and the early books are kind of D&D-adventurish.
When I was a kid I really liked reading Bernard Evslin's books about the Greek and Roman myths (published by Scholastic) from the library. They get reprinted every so often in paper, but it doesn't look like they're available as e-books yet.
Unfortunately the two major comics I could give you for Greek mythology (Shanower's Age of Bronze and Messner-Loeb's Epicurus the Sage; both very good indeed) would probably be considered above the age-appropriate level simply for the mostly non-sexual nudity involved. There is a comic book series aimed for younger readers as an intro to the Greek gods: The Olympians, by George O'Connor, which I've read the Athena volume of from the library. It looked like it was aimed at an older pre-teen slot (which was where the library filed it) and seemed a pretty nifty cartoony retelling. And there's always the Adventures of Asterix and Obelix, which are an awesome way to introduce Rome circa Julius Caesar to any age group.
For Japanese myths and legends and (pseudo)history, Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo comics are very good and highly recommended and truly all-ages. There isn't much in the way of overt sex or violence in the storylines so that older kids couldn't read it (allowing for the fact that it is about a masterless samurai rabbit in a land at unrest, that is) and Sakai really does the research to incorporate reasonably accurately depicted myth and history (allowing for the samurai rabbit thing).