Athena the Brain: Book 1 (Goddess Girls)

by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams

Athena has always been above average. She's never quite fit in at Triton Junior High, but who would've guessed that Athena is actually a goddess? Principal Zeus's daughter, to be exact. When she's summoned to Mount Olympus Academy, Athena thinks she might actually fit in for the first time in her life. But in some ways, school on Mount Olympus is not that different from down on Earth, and Athena is going to have to deal with the baddest mean girl in history -- Medusa! Authors Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams put a modern spin on classic myths with the Goddess Girls series. Follow the ins and outs of divine social life at Mount Olympus Academy, where the most privileged godboys and goddessgirls in the Greek pantheon hone their mythical skills.

• ISBN10: 1907411461
• ISBN13: 9781907411465
• Publish Date: 3 May 2012 (first published 6 April 2010)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 25 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
• Imprint: Little, Brown Young Readers
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 176
• Language: English

Reviews

I love this series. Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams are amazing at fracturing myths and legends. This is no exception to that. The Goddess Girls series are lighthearted, quirky reads featuring Greek myths and legends. Using the framework of the myths we know and love, Holub and Williams, twist these into tween friendly novels emphasising friendship and family.

In this one, Athena finds out she is the daughter of Zeus and has been invited to attend Mount Olympus Academy - the school where her dad is a principal. Athena leaves behind her mortal foster family and ascends to Mount Olympus where she meets other Goddess girls and boys and learns about her heritage and finds where she belongs. I was amused by the creative elements the authors came up with like the new classes Athena takes (Beauty-ology, Beast-ology, Hero-ology, Spell-ology and Revenge-ology), the history of the mortal inventions (the rake, the ship and the olive) and the reason behind the Trojan Wars (it was a class assignment!). I liked Athena. She was thrown in the deep end of a new family, new friends and a new school but she works hard to keep on top of her schoolwork and to put herself out there and make the best of an unusual situation. It's definitely aimed at middle grade but there's enough there to amuse older readers if not taken too seriously.

My own personal rating would be 3 stars. But for the target audience 4.5

[Jo]

Originally posted on YA book blog, Once Upon a Bookcase.

Athena the Brain is the first in the Goddess Girls series, a series of books for pre-teens where the protagonists are the Greek Goddesses as teens at school, learning what it takes to be a proper goddess. While at school, they bump into the other gods and goddesses we know from the myths, with a hint of humour.

Believing that she is mortal despite the strange things she is able to do Athena receives a letter from Zeus one evening, Prinicipal of Mount Olympus Academy - where all goddess girls and godboys go to school - informing her that he is her father, and she is now at the age to join the Academy and start her goddess training. This first installment introduces us to a number of characters who will eventually have their own books, Aphrodite, Artemis and Persephone, as well as others such as Pandora, Medusa, Poseidon and Zeus, and shows us just what life is like on Mount Olympus.

Athena the Brain is such a short story - at 160 pages - so telling you much more would probably spoil the story. But it is a fun, light, quick read that I'm sure older children will enjoy reading. It's a great introduction to Greek myths, such as the Trojan war, without overloading the youngsters with too much info they would find hard to understand, and amusing, "fictional" anecdotes about things like why Medusa has snakes for hair and can turn people into stone. I say "fictional" within speechmarks because they're not correct to my admittedly wanting knowledge of Greek myths, yet it's a myth, so it's fiction anyway.

It was interesting to see how the myths were tackled for the younger readers who are the target audience, and I'm intrigued to see how the story of Persephone and Hades is told in Persephone the Phony, the second book in this series that was released on 3rd May, too. Fun and clever, I'm sure these books will be a hit!