OddAndTheFrostGiantsNeil Gaiman knows how to tell a story. And Odd and the Frost Giants is no exception.

Odd was a crippled Norse boy in the age of the Vikings. Odd's father was dead, and his mother had re-married a neglectful man. One day, Odd rescued a bear and was followed home by the beast, along with an eagle and a fox. The three creatures turned out to be the gods Thor, Odin, and Loki transformed by an evil frost giant and cast out of Asgard, as part of a plot to steal Thor's hammer Mjolnir and to kidnap the beautiful goddess Freya.

Odd and the trio set out for Asgard to rescue Mjolnir and Freya.

Undersized and weak, Odd proves more valuable than expected.

This is a short, but delightful book - not only for its story and its characters - but for Gaiman's prose. One can imagine him sitting around a campfire and relaying the tale to a circle of Vikings who listen in wonder. As a bonus, each chapter features a beautiful ink drawing by Brett Helquist. Readers of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" will know his work; but, in this book, each drawing has the look of a woodcut, giving it a distinctly Nordic feel.

Odd and the Frost Giants is targeted at school-age children, but I am well into my 50s and I enjoyed it.