King Midas is obsessed with gold: counting it, touching it, imagining it. But when a strange young man grants his wish for a golden touch, things don't go quite as he planned--particularly for his daughter Marigold. In these selections from classic American author Nathaniel Hawthorne's charming retellings of Greek myths, children meet Midas and another engaging troublemaker, Pandora. The myths had, Hawthorne wrote, been around so long that they were "legitimate subjects for every age to clothe with its own garniture of manners and sentiment, and to imbue with its own morality." Ultimately Hawthorne's retellings of the myths are less didactic than simply entertaining, told in a conversational style that makes them perfect for children.