In 'My Night at the Gifted Carnival,' by Graci Kim, Riley feels out of place at a carnival full of magic until she stumbles on a way to help kids kidnapped by a faceless ghost. In 'The Loneliest Demon,' by Sarwat Chadda, Sik's mom makes him help a demon who wants to kill him get home again. In 'Bruto and the Freaky Flower,' by Tehlor Kay Mejia, Paola's supernatural dog is sick and finding the flower than can save him may be the end of her. In 'The Demon Drum,' by Rebecca Roanhorse, a powwow goes off the rails thanks to a cursed drum that Nizhoni and friends are determined to silence. In 'The Gum Baby Files,' by Kwame Mbalia, Gum Baby goes up against a ghost that erases history at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. In 'The Initiation,' by Yoon Ha Lee, Min finds it hard to hide her true fox-spirit identity when she's sent to spy school on a gas giant planet. Cervantes, Zane and Brooks get trapped in a cave with an ancient shapeshifting monster after their tour company's first one-star review. Roshani Chokshi's 'Beware the Grove of True Love' shows the last punishment for Aru and friends for dissing the goddess Urvashi: survive the retelling of a love story full of misery. Carlos Hernandez's 'Calamity Juice' finds the students of Florida's Culeco Academy riding puking unicorns through the multiverse to find their lost friend. THE CURSED CARNIVAL AND OTHER CALAMITIES: NEW STORIES ABOUT MYTHIC HEROES includes 10 stories from 10 different traditions and ten authors. Besides learning about myths and folklore, readers visit the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in the story by Kwame Mbalia (the Tristan Strong series) and learn about some American heroes: Medgar Evers, Ida B. In other stories, protagonists are attacked and injured by snakes, creepy ghosts (one with no face), giants, rock monsters throwing boulders, ancient demon monsters, a shapeshifting cave creature, a cursed drum, and puking unicorns. People are killed with spears and drowned, fights break out resulting in concussions and broken limbs, and a kid kills a giant boar. Riordan's Celtic story includes the most violence. Readers will be most engaged with the tales that include the characters they've already read about in the original series, otherwise they could get a little lost. Rick Riordan is the exception to this, authoring the last story about Celtic mythology (he spent 2020 getting his master's in Gaelic literature).

Parents need to know that The Cursed Carnival and Other Calamities: New Stories about Mythic Heroes is a collection of 10 short stories by 10 authors who write series for the Rick Riordan Presents imprint, which highlights authors of color who write about their own folklore and mythology traditions.

The cursed carnival rick riordan