Books like The Last Quest of Gilgamesh
By Ludmila Zeman
For kids drawn to ancient myths and epic journeys, this is a story that treats a child's big questions about loss and legacy with real weight. Ancient, sweeping, and elegiac, with a quiet emotional undertow beneath the adventure.
A restless chicken named Louise leaves the henhouse craving adventure, facing pirates on the high seas, a lion under the big top, and a mysterious stranger in a bustling bazaar.
In 1974, a French aerialist strings a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center and spends an hour walking, dancing, and performing tricks a quarter mile above the city.
A small black fish is the lone survivor of his school after a larger fish attacks — until he finds a new school of little red fish and teaches them to swim together as one giant shape to scare off enemies.
After the gods fail again and again to create lasting humans across five different suns, Quetzalcóatl the Feathered Serpent alone refuses to give up, journeying to the underworld to retrieve the sacred bones of creation.
A boy sets out to find his father, the Lord of the Sun, and must pass through four ceremonial chambers — the kiva of lions, snakes, bees, and lightning — to prove he belongs.
A four-year-old boy and his Japanese American family are forced from their California home into incarceration camps during World War II, moving through three different sites over three years while his parents work to keep the family safe.
A timid squirrel afraid of thunder, hawks, and dark forest paths must carry soup through Buckthorn Forest to her sick Granny Oak, facing creatures who want to help — and some who want the soup.
A young girl is separated from her mother at the last moment and must sail to America alone, only to discover the address for her family in New York has smudged into illegible ink.
A knight known as the Red Cross Knight sets out with a princess to face a dragon that has terrorized the countryside for years, in a battle that will decide the land's fate.
A poor boy who longs to paint is given a magic paintbrush that brings to life whatever he creates, until a greedy emperor sets out to capture him and claim its power for himself.
A whiz-kid inventor gets a mysterious summons to the North Pole with his sister and best friend, but when the Queen of the Dark Elves takes his sister, he must abandon his questions and rescue her.
An engineer and an explorer climb into a hollow metal ball they invented called the Bathysphere, risking leaks and explosions to dive deeper into the ocean than anyone has gone before.
