I adored it when I was a kid. I checked it out of the library over and over again. I read all the stories, even the ones I didn't understand, and pored over the Marie Provensen illustrations. That was where I first met the Greek myths, Homer, Beowulf, Tristan and Iseult, Roland, the Nibelungs, and Rustem and Sohrab. I didn't know they were classic stories, and I never got the impression that they were supposed to be good for me. I only knew that the book was at once solider and more wonderful than any other book I knew.

Thirty years later, I found my own copy. I was almost afraid to re-read it, in case it didn't measure up to my memories. What I found was that it was better than I'd known. Anne Terry White didn't reduce the stories to a plain uniform modern retelling. Her Beowulf has the startling compact abruptness of its original. Rustem and Sohrab is elegantly simple and lyrical. The same goes for all the other stories. They're all given their proper tellings, without once falling into stilted or over-precious language.

So many books are praised as "something very special". If ever that description applied to a book, it applies to this one. And if your library still has a copy, tell them to take good care of it.