Stories from Dante is a children's retelling of Dante's Divine Comedy by Mary MacGregor. I got it for $1.99 (or some very low price; maybe only .99) on my kindle but you can even read it for free at The Baldwin Project. Mary MacGregor was a Canadian children's author who lived from 1871 to 1961. In this book, which was published in 1906, she writes in a lovely, poetic way using old fashioned language. I have only dipped briefly into Purgatorio and Paradisio so I can't really speak to how good her retelling of these two books are, but I have studied the Inferno (though a while ago so my memory may be a bit rusty) and I thought she did an impressive job of giving a strong sense of the mood and progression of the journey, while leaving out a lot of the detail that would go over a child's head or be too adult.
I plan to use this book to introduce my 7th and 8th graders at our co-op to Dante's masterpiece, so that they have an understanding and frame of reference for when they study this in high school or college.
Two thumbs up!
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This sounds perfect for me and my son. Thanks!
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