I Am Reading: Medusa Gorgon's Bad Hair Day by Bethany Walker
Medusa Gorgon's Bad Hair Day by Bethany Walker 👉
| Illustrated by: | Katie Abey |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Scholastic |
| Publish date: | 14 August 2025 |
When you're a lowly human working in Athena's temple, life can be hard. Medusa's only consolations are her lovely flowing hair, and her best friend Arachne. But the gods can be fickle and cruel… Before long, her best friend is a spider, and Medusa has thrown Athena's shield into Hades' infinite well in a fit of anger. She's about to have a very bad hair day indeed…
Athena and underworld god Hades hatch a terrible revenge. Medusa is to face a fate worse than anything Athena can come up with (and she's pretty mad) – 21st century school! Sent into the future, Medusa – Meddy Gordon, now – has to find and recover Athena's shield to save herself and her friends. But school is weird, snakes are starting to appear in her hair, strangely familiar characters keep popping up, and her sisters aren't helping at all. And she can't shake the feeling that Hades is up to something even more devious than usual…
I really enjoyed this book. It's funny, super-readable, has great illustrations from Katie Abey, and has surprising depth, with Medusa struggling to control her anger, lots of little factoids presented in an easy format, and a good message about how the gods actually treat humans. I loved the "audience reaction" shots between chapters as spectators to this Greek tragedy discuss what they just saw (or wonder where they might be able to get smartphones like Medusa's…)
Funny, engaging, with lots of laugh-out moments and a good heart – if you liked Louie Stowell's Loki books, you'll love this tale of godly shenanigans.
(Thanks to Scholastic for sending me a copy of this book)