When I was towards
the end of primary school, I heard about a type of fiction that intrigued me –
the trouble was that I felt that it was not for me on two grounds. One
was that the age range listed was younger than I was. At this time I was finding
that literature I’d loved was no longer ‘speaking’ to me quite as it had
previously. The second was that it looked to be very much for boys. When I had previously tried to take part in cultural activities gendered as male it had not gone well.
But I did very much like the sound of this type of fiction.
Here the reader would not follow a book from beginning through middle to end
but could find their own path based on the outcome of a dice
throw or their own choice.
I have finally, today, been
reading such a book: Hercules and His
12 Labors: An Interactive Mythological Adventure written by Anika Fajardo and illustrated by Nadine
Takvorian for the series You Choose:Ancient Greek Myths.[1]
I found out about the book
when I was ordering another one, on a similar topic. This other book, currently
out of stock, is mentioned at the end of this posting.
I began reading hoping that the book could have the potential to ‘speak’
to me, including because of how it seemed to resonate with my work to date on
autism and classical myth. I am invariably frustrated at books for children –
or anyone – which narrate classical myth as though there is a 'true' version
of any particular story. This goes against one of the most exciting things
about classical myth – the flexibility of the particular stories – their fluidity
– the way in which each teller creates the myth afresh. So, a book where the
reader can find their own route had me intrigued.
What is more, the book’s
topic has a really good fit with the specific topic of the first set of activities for autistic children that I have put together. These resources centre around a
decision that Hercules had to make at a crisis point. Each path will lead to a particular
kind of future for Hercules, one a life of pleasure, the other a life of struggle. Each user of the resources can choose a particular path
– and they can do this if they want by thinking about what Hercules would
perhaps do, potentially helping stimulate theory of mind. Or they can make
their own choice, potentially helping them think about how the present can
turn into the future.
The book is also about
choosing. It doesn’t deal with the specific episode that my activities involve.
Instead, the reader encounters Hercules as he embarks on his twelve labours. As
the reader gets to a particular point they make a choice between what they, as Hercules,
should do next. Here is what happened to me
the first time I made a choice. I decided that, as Hercules, I would opt for a
way of dealing with particular tasks that seemed to be more in keeping with the
kind of choice that a modern reader might make. I ended up being killed and
directed to begin again or turn to a section at the back of the book giving information
about who Hercules was.
I returned to the start, and
again, the choice I made got me killed. This happened two more times. In all
I was killed by the Amazons after I tried to reason with their queen, by the
Stymphalian Birds’ knife-like feathers, by the followers of Eurystheus, and by
the Hydra’s teeth.
Then I realised what the
book was trying to do. It was presenting me with a series of choices where,
each time, the user either follows the myth and moves to another stage in the
career of the hero or does something different and is killed. Thus, the book does not
involve choosing as I envisage it in my activities – where diverse choices are each paralleled
in sources for Hercules, and where the user can, though their own choices,
create their own way though the story.
Thus the book is taking a different approach to choosing in relation to Hercules' adventures from the one I am taking. That said, the book might have a use in
relation to the preliminary activity I have devised where the children use existing
resources to build up an awareness of Heracles and classical myth that might
deepen their appreciation of the activities.
I wonder whether there
might be potential for a different kind of interactive book where taking a 'wrong' choice doesn’t lead invariably to the hero’s labours and life coming to an abrupt
end: where, for instance, a decision to reason with the Amazon queen rather
than steal her girdle equips the hero to continue to a fresh stage in his
career.
I’m waiting for the arrival of another interactive book
concerning Hercules, which my fellow Our Mythical Childhood researcher, Ayelet Peer, has recommended to me: Brandon Terrell’s, Greek
Mythology's Twelve Labors of Hercules: A Choose Your Path Book.[2] I look forward to seeing how this book enables the
reader to find their own path through Herculean mythology.
