The controversy surrounding the casting of Leah Sava Jeffries, a young black actress, as Annabeth Chase in the Disney+ series “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” only scratches the surface of the problems that plague classical reception in children’s literature. While Riordan wholeheartedly and publicly endorsed the casting of Jeffries as Annabeth Chase, it does not detract from the fact that the book series portrays Annabeth, a ‘child’ of Athena, as a girl with white skin and blond hair. What this controversy brings to the forefront is the problematic question who the rightful inheritors of classical mythology are (if anyone), and how this has been represented and negotiated, historically and in the present day, in children’s literature (Murnaghan and Roberts 2018).

The genre of children’s literature also brings forth the complexities of how mythology is made suitable for children and to what effect (Lovatt 2009). ‘Inappropriate’ mythological content is easily altered or obscured for children, but it is often done without consideration of the dangerous subtexts such alterations can create as when, for example, Persephone’s violent abduction is substituted with consent. Children’s literature has the unique quality of exposing the social and moral fault lines of society, because nothing demonstrates our adult anxieties more than the stories we tell our children (Nodelman 2008, Stephens and McCullam 2013).

This panel engages with classical reception in children’s literature and seeks to delve into questions regarding the representation of the ‘inheritors’ of classical mythology, particularly in American and European children’s literature. After all, according to Riordan, the Greek gods have settled over the Empire State building as their ‘logical’ new home. But we ask, why can’t the Greek gods settle over Burj-al-Khalifa? Reception in children’s literature, especially in America and Europe, is not simply the re-telling of ancient mythology. It is the transmission of a discipline fraught with insularity concerning race, gender, and sexuality—it is a monster of our creation.

Panelists:

• Caroline Murphy-Racette, “Feminist Mythological Revisions in the High School Classroom”

• Sarah Cullinan Herring, “Disability, Monsterization and Morality: the use and abuse of Classical mythology in The Princess and the Goblin“

• Greta Gualdi, “Undoing Myth, Reclaiming Power: The Heroine Remade in Polissena del Porcello (1993)”

• Krishni Burns, “Disabled Minotaurs and Caregiver Sisters in Popular Fiction”

• Eva Dalzell, “The Responsibility of Interpretation in Middle-Grade Classical Retellings”

• Micah Valliere, “Bacchus to School: Queer Alternatives to Education in 20th Century Irish Children's Fiction”