From gods to Gorgons, Genesis to genies, and with much ado about mermaids - Simpsons Comics: Get Some Fancy Book Learnin' puts high-minded and highfalutin literature in its place... on your favourite bookshelf...

Simpsons Comics: Get Some Fancy Book Learnin' sees The Simpsons take on the world's most beloved literary classics. Mount Olympus will never be the same when Homer presents The Liad and Ned Flanders takes a turn as Aesop. Then, in a tale of biblical proportions, Bart meets the most famous underachiever of all time, the Prodigal Son, and Abraham Simpson finds it is not so easy to keep a covenant with God when you have a son like Homer. Next Marge is Persian princess Scheherazde, who must impress the impulsive King Moe-mar Shahryar every night with a story in order to save her own neck. Then, Bart does the Bard, man, when the students of Springfield Elementary perform, measure by measure, virtually every one of William Shakespeare's plays in one midsummer night. Finally, Lisa attempts to win over Rod and Todd Flanders with the lovely and endearing Danish fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson.

As Simpsons Comics collections go, this is a pretty interesting one. There's just the right mix of humour and literary knowledge so that younger minds may want to know a little more about the tales this collection is based on.

Just about every major Simpsons character makes and appearance along the way, including Itchy & Scratchy, but as you'd expect Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie are the main focus of these stories.

My only slight complaint is that I was surprised that even though this was a UK edition - it has a specially produced UK sleeve which only shows the UK retail price and barcode on the back - it still contained American spellings. While this is understandable for the contents (which I assume are of American origin) when Titan have gone to the bother of printing a UK sleeve surely that sleeve should also have UK spellings.

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Darren Rea