The Epically Awesome Odyssey, as told by Nanny Piggins
By R A Spratt
Penguin 2026
Reviewed by Mia Macrossan
R.A Spratt is a prolific author in the junior fiction and middle grade space, with numerous best-selling books in the Nanny Piggins and Friday Barnes series, The Peski Kids books, several anthologies of short stories such as the Bedtime Stories with R A Spratt and several novels for young adult readers such as Romeo v Juliet .
Her style is irreverent, cozy and conversational with an emphasis on food, rule breaking and having fun. This almost works in The Epically Awesome Odyssey, as told by Nanny Piggins in that it is an amusing retelling of Homer’s story of the travels and adventures of Odysseus after the fall of Troy. According to Nanny Piggins Odysseus is a stunningly beautiful, brave and resourceful woman, very much in love with her husband Penelope. Her adventures as recounted by Nanny Piggins sort of follow the story as told by Homer with the occasional gender switch thrown in to fit the new parameters, e. g. Calypso is an incredibly handsome male in love with Odysseus.
There are plenty of jokes and lots of cake, (Odysseus makes a boat out of cake to leave Calypso’s island) interspersed with conversational snippets of information about life in ancient times contrasted with life today. An episode is sometimes prefixed by a Fun Fact, a paragraph that can be about almost anything ranging over pig sweat, sirens, the origin of Danish pastries, the Coriolis effect and everything in between. These are great, interesting, amusingly told and informative.
However, since I am very familiar with the traditional version I kept falling out of the story. I like the idea of retelling famous tales from a feminist perspective and here is a valiant attempt to present a female hero who is cunning, resourceful, brave, daring and all the rest of it. Young readers will enjoy this irreverent romp through Greek classical myths but I wouldn’t recommend it for a first encounter.
PS Nanny Piggins needs to check the story of the Judgement of Paris, p11. According to most accounts three goddesses are in the beauty competition, Athena the goddess of wisdom, Hera the goddess of family and marriage and Aphrodite the goddess of love. Aphrodite is the one who promises him the most beautiful woman on earth as wife, not Athena who promised him wisdom and prowess in war, and he gives Aphrodite, not Athena the apple etc.
