My daughter, newly in love with Greek mythology after reading several books in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, picked up this slim volume of Favorite Greek Myths by Mary Pope Osborne from the Bookmobile this summer. She read it quickly enough, finishing it easily before lunchtime.

When she showed it to me, she laughed at the incorrect title, noting that the gods named in the stories are all their Roman counterparts. So, where Osborne introduces Bacchus, Minerva, Venus and Diana, she should have used their Greek names: Dionysius, Athena, Aphrodite and Artemis. That's a rookie mistake, Mary! My 11-year-old daughter knows better!

She was, to be honest, fairly ambivalent when I asked if it was a good book so, of course, I had to read it myself.

The book provides only the barest of introductions to the rich mythology of ancient Greece, telling very brief, sanitized versions of three well-known tales: "The Golden Touch," about greedy King Midas; "The Weaving Contest," about vain Arachne; and "The Golden Apples," about proud Atalanta and clever Hippomenes. Each story is just three or four pages long, so don't expect much detail or character development.

The skinny book my daughter brought home is, by the way, an abbreviated version of an 81-page volume with the same title and several additional stories. I had some hope that Osborne might have used some of the proper Greek nomenclature in the longer edition, but a quick glance at the table of contents online shows the likes of Ceres, Proserpina and Cupid, rather than Demeter, Persephone and Eros. **Sigh**

I suppose this book would have been more appropriate for my daughter five or six years ago. Even so, using the wrong names for the Greek pantheon is an embarrassing gaffe that someone should have caught before this book went to press.