Following on from a flurry of recent research on children's literature and its engagement with the classical world (e.g. L. Maurice [ed.], The Reception of Ancient Greece and Rome in Children's Literature: Heroes and Eagles [2015]; O. Hodkinson and H. Lovatt [edd.], Classical Reception and Children's Literature: Greece, Rome and Childhood Transformation [2018]), this book discusses an impressive number of texts for young readers from the twentieth century onwards, examining how they encourage their readership to think about the classical past. What this book intends to do differently from previous studies that may fall more neatly within classical reception models is to approach the chosen texts via a cognitive theory model. Besides analysing how the texts respond to the classical past, this study aims to explore how, via the texts, young readers may ‘think about the classical past and their own relationship to it, and how might this experience potentially influence readers’ outlook more generally’ (p. 4). This appears to be a very ambitious aim. Instead of taking the more familiar route of investigating questions of power and ideology in children's texts that engage with the (mythical or historical) past, this study claims that these texts have the capacity to influence readers’ wider cognitive abilities. However, this cognitive approach, whilst engaging with recent and cutting-edge research and fascinating of itself, does not rely on reader response data or reception fieldwork by the authors. Instead, it is used as a literary method, relying upon the authors’ analysis of the texts and upon extracting what they see as three main conceptual models/broad metaphors via which ‘neoclassical’ texts (texts that centre around ‘postclassical adaptation of or riff upon an inspiration from antiquity’, p. 2) navigate the classical past. Though this approach offers a fresh lens to examine the chosen texts and the way in which children's literature approaches the classical past, the claim for a wider cognitive effect is therefore grounded in the authors’ opinion and not otherwise well supported throughout the study.

Having said that, the three cognitive models the authors propose are well thought through and convincing. The first model, examined in detail in Chapters 2 and 3, is the palimpsest, focusing on the metaphor of the past and present as co-existing in a multi-layered series of deposits. The second, examined in Chapters 4 and 5, is that of the map, which focuses on journeys/movement across space and tends to be used by quest or problem-solving narratives. The third model, examined in Chapter 6, is the fractal, in which small parts of the narrative mirror the structure of the overarching whole by analogy. These models are set out clearly in Chapter 1, the introduction, in which we are also given a brief discussion of cognitive theory and its relationship with literary studies, and a clear statement of the limits of the study: the texts that are examined date from the early twentieth century until the present (and it is a credit to the study that a large proportion of the texts are very recent and, here, are offered an original analytical perspective). The texts are by British or American authors and mostly addressed at middle-grade/high-school readers, conventionally termed ‘chapter books’, and not illustrated texts (such as picture books for the very young) or narratives in other media. Straightforward retellings are excluded too: this study is interested in more complex engagements with classical history or mythology.

Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the palimpsest model/metaphor. In Chapter 2 the study begins with R. Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), which the authors consider as a foundation text for a nostalgic and somewhat melancholy view of the past that emphasises the transience of the individual's occupation of time and space, but also shows the complexities and contradictions of the present's relationship with the past. This discussion is followed by an examination of three texts for adults (Joseph O'Neil's Land Under England [1935]; Warwick Deeping's The Man Who Went Back [1940]; and C.S. Lewis's The Hideous Strength [1945]). These are discussed as direct responses to Kipling's text and form part of a ‘collectivity’ of texts that then leads to works for children in the 1970s: Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising (1973) and Silver on the Tree (1977); Joan Aiken's The Shadow Guests (1980); and Philip Turner's Sea Peril (1968). Though there were some excellent insights here, I felt that the focus on a cognitive approach was lost: the argument seemed very much historical (as in the more traditional studies that have addressed many of these texts so far). Conversely, in Chapter 3 the cognitive model appears to work much better. Here the authors present a quasi-Freudian interpretation of the past as painful and traumatic, which can encourage young readers to think empathetically and to engage with attitudes to aging and death. The chapter discusses Edith Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle (1907); Caroline Dale Snedecker's Theras and His Town (1924), The Forgotten Daughter (1933) and The White Isle (1940); Elizabeth George Speare's The Bronze Bow (1961); and Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth (1954). Though most of these texts are not as obviously palimpsestic as the ones discussed in Chapter 2, the authors argue convincingly for their complex presentation of a historical novel trope while also highlighting the reader's present via the authorial voice or other techniques. There is, at the end of the chapter, an acknowledgement that the palimpsest metaphor is somewhat dated, and that is an argument reprised in the Chapter 6, in which the authors claim that the fractal text is its replacement.

Before following this line of argument, the study continues in a roughly chronological order with two chapters discussing the map metaphor in ‘neoclassical’ texts. This metaphor focuses on texts that include ‘detailed descriptions of the protagonists’ physical journeys over unfamiliar terrain’ (p. 94). Understandably, this appears to be a rather large remit, and therefore in Chapter 4 the authors limit their scope by focusing on texts that represent real or symbolic underworlds, and argue that these texts offer cognitively ways of negotiating death. The texts here are E. Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet (1906), C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair (1953), Roger Lancelyn Green's Mystery at Mycenae: an Adventure Story of Ancient Greece (1957), the seventeen novels in Caroline Lawrence's Roman Mysteries series (2001–9), K.M. Peyton's Roman Pony trilogy (2007–2009), Katherine Marsh's The Night Tourist (2007) and The Twilight Prisoner (2009), and Tony Abbott's Underworlds quartet (2011–2012). Here, the focus of the analysis follows from the previous chapter in that it centres on themes of encountering real instances and symbolic representations of death, often alluding to the Persephone myth (this identification feels more secure with some texts than with others). Though there is a discussion of maps used by several of the texts, the idea of the map and mapping seems more conceptual and allows a sophisticated discussion. The chapter sums up that ‘texts that bring young characters into real or figurative underworlds, confronting them with death and inviting them to weigh possibilities for coping with it, serve as maps that offer guidance of a potentially profound sort’ (p. 143).

Chapter 5, the second ‘maps’ chapter, moves us chronologically to the twenty-first century and focuses on the ways in which map texts use humour, parody and the carnivalesque to bridge the ‘high’ culture of the classics with low-culture motifs. The first four sections of the chapter examine ludic narratives set in versions or settings of the ancient world told (or at least shaped by) animal protagonists: Paul Shipton's The Pig Scrolls (2005) and The Pig Who Saved the World (2006), the five books of Robin Price's Spartapuss series (2004–2010), Gary Northfield's Julius Zebra series (three books at the time of writing, 2015–2017 – since then the fourth book has been announced), and Vaughan Edwards and Barry Creyton's The Dogs of Pompeii (2006). Viewing the classical world via animal eyes allows for play, parody and even scatological humour, and gradually reveals popular culture as an ally, rather than enemy, of high culture. This reaches its apogee with the five books of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series (2005–9), in which the classical world is transposed into contemporary America; and though the series expresses ambivalence towards the classical world, ultimately it still serves a partially didactic purpose. All these map texts may depend upon humour, but also offer a hopeful narrative of heroism.

Chapter 6 revisits the idea of the palimpsest to argue that in more contemporary texts this model has been replaced by the fractal text, in which the narrative is structured around patterns of mirroring at micro- and macro-level, ultimately leading towards a ‘jaundiced view of progress’ (p. 189). The authors discuss texts that tend towards dystopia: Alan Garner's Red Shift (1971), John Christopher's Fireball trilogy (1981–1986), N.M. Browne's Warriors trilogy (2000–2009), Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy (2008–2010), Sabaa Tahir's then unfinished Ember in the Ashes quartet (2015–2018 – the fourth book, A Sky Beyond the Storm, was published in December 2020), and the five books of Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen's Thief series (1996–2017). The authors’ argument is that fractal texts reproduce the idea of being caught up in something too large and overwhelming that cannot be controlled, even by characters who seem to have special gifts or abilities. This makes it a logical heir to palimpsest texts: from a viewpoint that privileges collective rather than individual history and memory to one that stretches this to ‘a formal and philosophical rejection of agency as a meaningful and dispositive term’ (p. 238).

The concluding Chapter 7 brings together some of the wider debates set out throughout the book, returning to the cognitive approach in a more coherent way, and raising the question of the choice of the classical world as a locus for the metaphors each chapter has been exploring. My preference would have been for this approach to be more prominent in the preceding chapters: at times the discussion of the themes and metaphors seem to be the central axis of the argumentation, while the presence of the classical world seems somewhat incidental. In the conclusion the authors’ attempt to address this question creates yet another metaphor, that of the classical world as parent, to be longed for, challenged, dismantled, parodied or questioned by the ‘neoclassical’ texts examined, ultimately creating a version of the classical past that can be cruel, violent or capricious. The claim that this empowers young readers is interesting, but would perhaps require additional research methodologies to show conclusively.

Overall, this is a fascinating book, which examines an impressive array of texts and should be especially commended for its nuanced discussion of contemporary children's literature. The cognitive approach is not always clearly explained or supported, but it opens up a fruitful discussion that is bound to generate further research.