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Myths and Legends from Around the World
Do you know how Renuka, the warrior goddess, fought rakshasas? Or how Nu Wa held the broken sky together? Or how Rome was built or the zebra got its stripes? You may have heard of Achilles and his heel, but what of Cassandra and her prophesies? And how Anansi tricked the sky god to bring stories to the world? Do you know why the boat tour at the Niagara Falls is called ‘Maid of the Mist’?
Sowmya Rajendran’s Myths and Legends from Around the World is a vivid retelling of some of the most well-loved stories of the world. Meet mighty gods and powerful goddesses, mystical women and ferocious beasts, trickster spiders and sleeping giants as you discover how big the world is and yet, how small. How different we are from each other and yet, how similar! Stories connect us all through the ages, with a shared imagination that knows no boundaries. Joy, anger, jealousy, sadness, ambition, pride, love…human emotions, after all, are the same everywhere.
You might be familiar with some of these stories, but this inclusive book will lead you to seeing them again in a new light. Find out how our past is entwined with our present and why our world has never forgotten these captivating tales.
Sowmya Rajendran’s Myths and Legends from Around the World is a vivid retelling of some of the most well-loved stories of the world. Meet mighty gods and powerful goddesses, mystical women and ferocious beasts, trickster spiders and sleeping giants as you discover how big the world is and yet, how small. How different we are from each other and yet, how similar! Stories connect us all through the ages, with a shared imagination that knows no boundaries. Joy, anger, jealousy, sadness, ambition, pride, love…human emotions, after all, are the same everywhere.
You might be familiar with some of these stories, but this inclusive book will lead you to seeing them again in a new light. Find out how our past is entwined with our present and why our world has never forgotten these captivating tales.
- GenresMythology
148 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 10, 2020
23 people are currently reading
116 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 17, 2021
I remember growing up listening to Hindu mythological stories from my father. We did the same with our kids but nowadays he has developed taste for more than Hindu gods and goddesses, even panchtantra. So we shifted to different genres. Recently I was recommended the book "Myths and Legends from Around the World".
The very first impression of the book cover was that of Maa Bahuchara & her sister deities. I am not sure whether your guys know it or not, but in southern Gujarat, many goddess shrines & temples have similar decoration to the one in cover design.
The book contains a little over 20 short stories, from different cultures and civilizations. Even theme of the stories is also divided into three parts just like of Hindu belief of creation, organization, and destruction. You will find stories based on deities and animals. I read one story per day to my kid for the last month and he enjoyed it.
The language is easy for kids. The story length is also aa per child's interest not too long not too short. If parents read it to a child it will take roughly 10-15 minutes which is adequate for them to get sleepy with a nice story.
I love it and currently second round is going on with some of the favorites of my child.
The book deserves 4.5 out of 5.
The very first impression of the book cover was that of Maa Bahuchara & her sister deities. I am not sure whether your guys know it or not, but in southern Gujarat, many goddess shrines & temples have similar decoration to the one in cover design.
The book contains a little over 20 short stories, from different cultures and civilizations. Even theme of the stories is also divided into three parts just like of Hindu belief of creation, organization, and destruction. You will find stories based on deities and animals. I read one story per day to my kid for the last month and he enjoyed it.
The language is easy for kids. The story length is also aa per child's interest not too long not too short. If parents read it to a child it will take roughly 10-15 minutes which is adequate for them to get sleepy with a nice story.
I love it and currently second round is going on with some of the favorites of my child.
The book deserves 4.5 out of 5.
December 21, 2020
Myths and Legends are my kryptonite. I might be getting a little dramatic here, but you get my point! Sowmya Rajendran's latest collection titles 'Myths and Legends from Around the World' is a mythology lover's haven. Before I move into the stories, I would like to mention that Rajendran let's the narrative do the talking. She refrains from manipulating the story and strictly follows a concise approach to give us the conception behind the stories.
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Divided into three sections- Creation, conflict and Churning, the author takes us across multiple mythological dimensions, including the lesser known tales from Indian Mythology. (I didn't know the story behind Onam🥺)
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'Myths and Legends from Around the World' is a collection suited for readers across all ages. If you are a mythological aficionado, this is a book that must be a part of your shelf.
.
Divided into three sections- Creation, conflict and Churning, the author takes us across multiple mythological dimensions, including the lesser known tales from Indian Mythology. (I didn't know the story behind Onam🥺)
.
'Myths and Legends from Around the World' is a collection suited for readers across all ages. If you are a mythological aficionado, this is a book that must be a part of your shelf.
November 21, 2020
Book Title: Myths and Legends From Around The World
Author: Sowmya Rajendran
Format: Kindle
My Thoughts:
Sometimes being a dimwit or a child lost in the past times is what I love to become. And this is entirely possible when I read children's books. This might look funny, but the reason for reading the young people's literature has two advantages. One is it helps me forget the reality for a small amount of and second is to understand how the books enhance a kid's mind and thoughts.
When I first started reading this book, I did not realise the magic it is going to do. The first story in the book How Nu Wa created the world?, from China blew my mind. The vivid description, the intrinsic detailing and the narration caught my attention. Since the lockdown, I have been reading excellent books, but deep down in mind, there is some unknown pressure due to the ongoing events in and around the world. Being a book from the children literature, this book has hugged me with its fantastic stories and warmth.
The book has twenty-two stories that belong to different places, and these are categorised into three. One being the Creation, second is Conflict, and the third category is Churning. The story mentioned above from China falls under category one. Another story from the Churning category, which I liked is - 'Andal', an Indian story.
How good is the author's writing style
Author Sowmya is known for engaging narration and accessible language in her books. Her previous books have been reachable to the young readers for attractive writing skills. In this book also, she has given the readers an ala-carte of short stories from all over the world. A consistent way of presenting good stories to the young minds is her strength, and in this book, which happens to be my second book of hers, her writing stays atop.
How entertaining is the book?
This book by Sowmya is basically targetted towards children and young kids who always come with questions like how did the world start, who created the world or how did humans come onto the earth. This is an example of how the author has shared with her readers with many stories and tales that run on the myths across the world. I myself have found some stories absolutely stunning and interesting, which I admit I am unaware of.
There is information, there is wow factor, and there is knowledge in the stories. The stories are all around the world, which makes the book more interesting. All such points intersect and thus make the book ' entertaining'.
Final Verdict
Informative, interesting and fascinating book!
Rating:
5/5
Author: Sowmya Rajendran
Format: Kindle
My Thoughts:
Sometimes being a dimwit or a child lost in the past times is what I love to become. And this is entirely possible when I read children's books. This might look funny, but the reason for reading the young people's literature has two advantages. One is it helps me forget the reality for a small amount of and second is to understand how the books enhance a kid's mind and thoughts.
When I first started reading this book, I did not realise the magic it is going to do. The first story in the book How Nu Wa created the world?, from China blew my mind. The vivid description, the intrinsic detailing and the narration caught my attention. Since the lockdown, I have been reading excellent books, but deep down in mind, there is some unknown pressure due to the ongoing events in and around the world. Being a book from the children literature, this book has hugged me with its fantastic stories and warmth.
The book has twenty-two stories that belong to different places, and these are categorised into three. One being the Creation, second is Conflict, and the third category is Churning. The story mentioned above from China falls under category one. Another story from the Churning category, which I liked is - 'Andal', an Indian story.
How good is the author's writing style
Author Sowmya is known for engaging narration and accessible language in her books. Her previous books have been reachable to the young readers for attractive writing skills. In this book also, she has given the readers an ala-carte of short stories from all over the world. A consistent way of presenting good stories to the young minds is her strength, and in this book, which happens to be my second book of hers, her writing stays atop.
How entertaining is the book?
This book by Sowmya is basically targetted towards children and young kids who always come with questions like how did the world start, who created the world or how did humans come onto the earth. This is an example of how the author has shared with her readers with many stories and tales that run on the myths across the world. I myself have found some stories absolutely stunning and interesting, which I admit I am unaware of.
There is information, there is wow factor, and there is knowledge in the stories. The stories are all around the world, which makes the book more interesting. All such points intersect and thus make the book ' entertaining'.
Final Verdict
Informative, interesting and fascinating book!
Rating:
5/5
March 8, 2026
Book Title: Myths and Legends
Author: Sowmya Rajendran
Genre: Mythology / Cultural Exploration
Language: English
Format: Kindle (Prime Reading)
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (6/5)
Review:
Anthropology museums quietly do something dangerous. They collapse the illusion that civilizations were separate.
In Mexico, standing in front of Aztec and Mayan artifacts, a strange familiarity begins to appear. Serpents, sun gods, cosmic trees, creator couples, war goddesses, trickster figures. The same patterns repeat across continents that supposedly never met. Then you notice it again in Greece. In Egypt. In Persia. In India. Different names, same instincts.
Humans everywhere once saw the world as alive.
The sun was not just a star. It was Surya, Amaterasu, Ra.
Storms were not weather. They were Indra, Zeus, Susanoo.
Trickster wisdom appeared as Narad, Hermes, Anansi, Loki.
Cosmic balance appeared as Shiva–Shakti, Yin–Yang, dual creator gods.
Across these cultures the worldview is strikingly consistent: nature is sacred, power is relational, and the universe is animated by forces larger than humans. Gods were not distant abstractions. They were expressions of wind, rivers, fertility, war, wisdom, chaos, renewal.
What modernity often calls “mythology” was once simply how people understood reality.
Today’s world, with its rigid separation between science, religion, and nature, is the anomaly. Ancient cultures lived inside a symbolic ecosystem where humans, animals, land, and cosmos were part of one continuous order.
That realization is the real artifact in an anthropology museum. Not the statues or the masks.
The realization that civilizations separated by oceans were asking the same questions and arriving at eerily similar answers.
Author: Sowmya Rajendran
Genre: Mythology / Cultural Exploration
Language: English
Format: Kindle (Prime Reading)
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (6/5)
Review:
Anthropology museums quietly do something dangerous. They collapse the illusion that civilizations were separate.
In Mexico, standing in front of Aztec and Mayan artifacts, a strange familiarity begins to appear. Serpents, sun gods, cosmic trees, creator couples, war goddesses, trickster figures. The same patterns repeat across continents that supposedly never met. Then you notice it again in Greece. In Egypt. In Persia. In India. Different names, same instincts.
Humans everywhere once saw the world as alive.
The sun was not just a star. It was Surya, Amaterasu, Ra.
Storms were not weather. They were Indra, Zeus, Susanoo.
Trickster wisdom appeared as Narad, Hermes, Anansi, Loki.
Cosmic balance appeared as Shiva–Shakti, Yin–Yang, dual creator gods.
Across these cultures the worldview is strikingly consistent: nature is sacred, power is relational, and the universe is animated by forces larger than humans. Gods were not distant abstractions. They were expressions of wind, rivers, fertility, war, wisdom, chaos, renewal.
What modernity often calls “mythology” was once simply how people understood reality.
Today’s world, with its rigid separation between science, religion, and nature, is the anomaly. Ancient cultures lived inside a symbolic ecosystem where humans, animals, land, and cosmos were part of one continuous order.
That realization is the real artifact in an anthropology museum. Not the statues or the masks.
The realization that civilizations separated by oceans were asking the same questions and arriving at eerily similar answers.
June 10, 2022
Some of the stories are totally out of context and closure and some stories are fine with the context and all but that is not what this book is about. The takeaway that this book intends is how ancient civilizations, ancient humans percieved things and how they attributed absurd mythological characters and stories to justify the extraordinary natural phenomenons which were unfathomable to them. And this insight makes religions, religious stories, their rules and traditions, myths and belief systems sound totally funny.
January 5, 2021
Myths and legends act as a foundation for learning and understanding modern Literature. While many don’t believe in knowing about the myths, I feel they are important as they narrate the ancient tales about the world and the experiences of mankind. This, in return, rekindles our curiosity to know more about the past that eventually acts as the compass for our future. Therefore, Myths and Legends is just the book that will re-tell every legend and help the readers take a plunge into folk Literature.
Read the full review here: https://aliveshadow.com/category-book...
Read the full review here: https://aliveshadow.com/category-book...
February 13, 2023
Detailed rating: 9/10
Designated song: Promisedland - MIKA
What I love about this book is how it can package such beautiful myths into something very concise whilst utilising very laid-back and modern narratives and still managing to make the myths sound beautiful. I also love how the stories are not exclusively from the Western Hemisphere. I love it when authors bring a decolonised perspective in mythology because nowadays, we are much more familiar to European and Classical Myths. So, to find stories from the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia -- that's just gorgeous!
Here's to more decolonised and deconstructed narratives!
Designated song: Promisedland - MIKA
What I love about this book is how it can package such beautiful myths into something very concise whilst utilising very laid-back and modern narratives and still managing to make the myths sound beautiful. I also love how the stories are not exclusively from the Western Hemisphere. I love it when authors bring a decolonised perspective in mythology because nowadays, we are much more familiar to European and Classical Myths. So, to find stories from the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia -- that's just gorgeous!
Here's to more decolonised and deconstructed narratives!
November 18, 2022
Myths & Legends have always fascinated me. Although I have read different versions of these stories, reading first hand stories is always more amazing. This book has worked as fine aggregator of stories around the world. Worth reading.
Just In: Just knew that England don’t have any original myths. They are surviving with imported myths. Except for legends of King Arthur.
Just In: Just knew that England don’t have any original myths. They are surviving with imported myths. Except for legends of King Arthur.
December 7, 2020
Lovely stories.
September 26, 2023
Undoubtedly refreshing to the pursuer of mysteries and unexplored journeys of the world. I bought this book whimsically in a bookstore. And I will keep it with me from now.
November 29, 2023
A nice wholesome collection of mythological and folk stories from around the world.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews