Hatshepsut seems to have experimented with gender to find a form that was both tolerable to the Egyptian people and elites, as well as best represented her personal image of herself. She is often depicted with both male and female attributes. It’s important to note that this gender swap does not create a utopian society. This world is merely a reflection of our own with all the same problems and power imbalances, just with the genders reversed. The purpose of this book is to help us see our own world and all its inequalities in a clearer light and hopefully to help us all empathise with ‘the other side’. We hope to break down boundaries, allowing children and adults to explore even more possible roles. To be courageous heroines, loving fathers or even beastly Minoheifers in a less divided world. I know that this is a book that we will read again and again. I think it is one that you will take something more from each time that you read it. It would be wonderful to use this book alongside more traditional retellins with children in upper KS2 and secondary education to see what they think of these Gender Swapped stories. I think there will be some incredible discussions and I hope that some children, like William, will be inspired to try changing the stories that mean the most to them to see a reflection of their world and to continue breaking down boundaries in stories and the world around them.

Following the incredible success of Gender Swapped Fairy Tales they have taken that same simple step. They haven't rewritten the stories in this book. They haven't reimagined the endings, or reinvented characters. What they have done is switch all the genders. The needles and pins were said to be relevant to seamstresses in rural French history, I'm now trying and failing to find good sources ... Imagine a world where seductive male sirens lure brave heroines to their death, where Icara and her mother fly too close to the sun, and where beautiful men are forced to wed underworld queens... William also took great delight in the linguistics and especially the change of the names. Minoheifer made us both laugh! And we loved Medus with his beard of snakes. Imagine a world where seductive male sirens lure brave heroines to their death, where Icara and her mother fly too close to the sun, and where beautiful men are forced to wed underworld queens…It was interesting for us both to read the author and illustrator notes at the beginning of the book, to see how the algorithm was used to change the stories and which elements had to be adapted manually. Fransman enjoyed the women who came out of the gender swap. “We now have these super-macho women, Thesea and Odyssea; they’re just awful. I don’t think I realised how badly behaved they were. I mean, Odyssea condemns her entire crew to death because she cannot not boast to the Cyclopsess. When people think of Odysseus and Theseus and Perseus, the male versions, I don’t think they think of them as psychopaths.” Karrie Fransman writes and draws visual stories and comics that have been published in The Guardian, The Times, The BBC, Time Out, The Telegraph, The New Statesman, The Young Vic, Psychologies Magazine, The Arts Council and The Goethe Institute. She published two graphic novels with Penguin Random House.'The House That Groaned', and the award winning 'Death of the Artist'. She developed an award winning comic about a teenage refugee, for The British Red Cross, created a 2 storey installation for Southbank Centre and was commissioned to make a 'Selves Portrait' for an exhibition with Manchester Art Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. You can see more of her work at karriefransman.com

Jonathan had just become a father to a daughter and was starting to think about the world she would grow up in. As a ‘digital inventor’, he wondered if he could invent something that would allow people to see the world in a different light and expose the power imbalances ingrained in our society. He set about creating a computer algorithm that swapped all the gender of any text - turning ‘he’ to ‘she’, ‘Mother’ to ‘Father’ and ‘Hero’ to ‘Heroine’. Of course names had to be changed, but since many Greek names have both male and female versions, this was not too hard to adjust for. Where not they made sure it was still a valid change in keeping with the myths themselves. The Greek myths’ peak patriarchy, dramatic power imbalances and raging toxic masculinity demanded to be fed into the gender-swapping algorithm. Photograph: Karrie Fransman As with all fairy tales, there's various interpretations, versions and readings, inevitably. The 'wolf' was often a 'were wolf' and in the older versions Red manages to escape by saying she has to pee ...A new captivating, inspiring, and totally perspective-shifting volume from the wife and husband team behind Gender Swapped Fairy Tales

I really enjoyed this book, and I found the concept of gender swapping very interesting. It was refreshing to see the women warriors out fighting and the men told to sit inside. Even the language used to describe the genders was different to that typically used in mythology, for example women being described as brave and great. The illustrations were beautiful and interesting and I loved the colour scheme. They really brought the myths to life. The stories were intriguing, easy to read and exciting. My favourites were Odyssea and the Cyclopess because it is very clever, and Pandorus and his Casket. They were funny and light-hearted, so perfect for younger readers as well as older ones. I feel very well informed about Greek mythology and would definitely recommend it to a friend! Grace B, 14 Having changed the way we look at Fairy Tales in their last book, Karrie and Jon have turned to these ancient stories to see what magic their marvelous gender swapping machine can work on them. As before, they haven't rewritten these myths. They haven't reimagined endings, or reinvented characters. All they've done is switch all the genders. Thank you Faber Books for introducing us to this brilliant book and inviting us to be part of the tour. The way we tell stories matters. The way we see and understand and talk about the world around us and the people in it matters. Books like this one and its predecessor matter. They’re talking to me on a video call, sitting on their bed, “like John and Yoko”, laughs Fransman, letting slip a little unconscious bias, which she readily confesses to. It comes out when she’s with her four-year-old daughter, too, “referring to animals as male – Hello Mr Magpie – or assuming the school photographer is a man, and I think I’m a switched on card-carrying feminist!”Armistice Day: A Collection of Remembrance - Spark Interest and Educate Children about Historical Moments