Myths often explain the creation of the world and its creatures. Find out how the Greek goddess Athena created spiders in this brilliantly illustrated Short Tales Greek Myth. Pink level for your fluent reader.

'The power of McSweeney's work cannot be separated from its association with forms of oracle and soothsaying, and so it is uncanny that it should arrive in the middle of a global pandemic... Frightening and brilliant' Dan Chiasson, New Yorker How does the body gestate grief? How does toxicity birth catastrophe? In the months leading up to her daughter Arachne's birth, US poet Joyelle McSweeney set out to write a quiver of poems like a quiver of poison arrows: formally and sonically virtuosic, laced with the poet's obsessive concerns with contamination, decay and the sublime, featuring a crown of 'toxic sonnets' for the tuberculosis bacterium that killed Keats. But when Arachne was born with an unexpected birth defect, lived briefly and died, the poet was visited by a second welter of poems, odes of love, grief, perplexity and rage. These two books, Toxicon & Arachne, form a double collection of poems weighing love, grief, art and survival in increasingly toxic days. Toxicon & Arachne is the culmination of eight years of engagement with lyric under a regime of global and personal catastrophes.

The goddess Athena challenges Arachne to a weaving contest and ends up a sore loser.

Arachne's Daughter: A tale of murder, mayhem and madness is a modern day Greek tragedy, with multiple threads weaving a strange, yet familiar pattern. In this spellbinding story, a beautiful young witch named Antigone finds herself constantly vilified by religious bigotry, superstition and ignorance that feed off 17th-century witch paranoia. One day a mysterious parcel arrives. It is a powerful and magical gift from the past, one that keeps cropping up at unexpected moments with strange outcomes. Antigone's story is one of being discriminated against, and of being sexually abused and tortured, but the day comes when Antigone the victim becomes Antigone the ruthless assassin. In her deadly wake, she leaves communities cringing, the authorities baffled, and the mental health system in chaos. Amid the murder, mayhem and madness, Antigone must also battle her own demons of mental illness and a deeply scarred childhood. From Mount Olympus in ancient Greece to Mount Wellington in 20th-century Tasmania, and places in-between, Arachne's Daughter is a journey fraught with madness, danger, death and sacrifice. About the Author: Dannii Lane was one of thirty-five alternate personalities (alters) in a multiple personality system (MPD). Dannii was also a witch. Inspiration for the book came from a love of Greek history and myths, and a background of child abuse and mental illness. When not writing, Dannii worked tirelessly advocating for mental health reform. Sadly, due to spontaneous integration, Dannii did not survive to see her novel published. Publisher's website: http: //sbpra.com/DanniiLane

Because she boasts that she weaves better than anyone, Arachne is turned into a spider.

Arachne is always boasting that her weaving is better than the goddess Athena's. So Athena decides to teach the boastful girl a terrible lesson... Join a cast of larger-than-life characters in a series of extraordinary adventures.

Orb weavers! Weavers of tangled nets! All eight-legged ones... Cast to the four winds my story's thread. Arachne, classical literature's most famous weaver exhorts her spider minions in this epic adaptation of a famous Greek myth. The talented, rebellious teenage Arachne here tells her own story in unforgettable words. She speaks of her impoverished childhood and lonely, steadfast pursuit of excellence in a bold, passionate voice. Her unshakable belief in herself and persistent questioning of divine authority lead to a dramatic confrontation with the goddess Athena, a fateful weaving contest, and an unexpected transformation. Poet Kate Hovey's lyrical verse and Blair Drawson's stunning artwork together create a timeless rendering of the ancient struggle between the headstrong Arachne and the powerful Athena.