Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, has trouble putting her bright and fun ideas into action in this twentieth Goddess girls adventure! Ever since she inspired Homer to write his epic works, Calliope feels like she has a lot to live up to! It doesn’t help that, despite her success, she always feels like she is in the shadows of her older, mega-talented sisters. When Calliope is invited to Mount Olympus Academy, she knows this is her chance to prove to everyone what she’s made of. But after struggling to come up with the perfect idea for her first big school project, Calliope decides she needs a roomie to help keep her on task and study, just like her sisters did for her back home. There’s just one problem: everyone already seems to be paired up. Can Calliope find her own inspiration, the perfect roommate, and her own spotlight at MOA? Joan Holub has authored and/or illustrated over 140 children’s books, including the Goddess Girls series, the Heroes in Training series, the New York Times bestselling picture book Mighty Dads (illustrated by James Dean), and Little Red Writing (illustrated by Melissa Sweet). She lives in North Carolina and is online at JoanHolub.com. Suzanne Williams is a former elementary school librarian and the author of over seventy books for children, including the award-winning picture books Library Lil (illustrated by Steven Kellogg) and My Dog Never Says Please (illustrated by Tedd Arnold), and several chapter book and middle grade series. She also coauthors the Goddess Girls and Thunder Girls series with the fantastic Joan Holub. Visit her at Suzanne-Williams.com. Calliope the Muse 1 Architecture-ology Blues One and a half weeks later . . . TELVE-YEAR-OLD CALLIOPE HAD JUST TAKEN her seat in her last-period Architecture-ology class on Friday afternoon when she heard a sound. “Psst!” She glanced over at Medusa, the green-skinned, snaky-haired mortal girl whose desk was next to hers. Was Medusa trying to get her attention? Or had her snakes simply been hissing? This puzzle was solved when Medusa leaned her way. “I heard you gave that author guy, Homer lots of inspiration, while he was writing The Iliad and The Odyssey. True?” Calliope’s long wavy red hair, which was gathered in a loose ponytail at the back of her neck, bounced a bit as she nodded. “True.” Inspiring those two scrollbooks had made her kind of famous. Though not as famous as they’d made the fifteen-year-old author Homer himself! “Then maybe you could help me too?” Medusa asked. “I’ve got a paper due on Monday for Revenge-ology class, and I’m totally blanking. Can’t come up with any ideas for it. None that are good, anyway.” “What’s the topic?” Calliope asked matter-of-factly. She’d only begun to attend Mount Olympus Academy a month or so ago, but already she’d gotten used to fellow students asking her for ideas on this and that. Most of them had heard the story of how she had inspired Homer. While writing about a mortal hero named Odysseus, Homer had pleaded eloquently for her helpful ideas, asking her to “sing” to him of Odysseus, “the man of twists and turns.” Just thinking about Homer made Calliope sigh dreamily. He had such a great vocabulary and was so incredibly talented. And she adored his cute spiky blue hair. But, unfortunately, she could only crush on him from afar. Because except for when she’d been helping him with his books, he seemed totally blind to the fact that she was even alive! Medusa leaned toward Calliope again. “Well?” Emphasizing her request, the snakes on top of her head curved themselves into a dozen scaly, green question marks. Calliope snapped to attention. She’d been so lost in her thoughts about Homer that she’d missed Medusa’s reply to her question! “Sorry. Spaced out for a minute. What did you just say?” Medusa let out a frustrated little huff and glanced up to be sure Mr. Libon, the teacher, wasn’t yet looking for everyone’s attention, ready to start class. “I said that Ms. Nemesis told us our papers could be about anything related to revenge.” “Hmm. Pretty wide open, then.” Calliope tapped her chin with an index finger, thinking. “This is just off the top of my head,” she said after a moment, “but maybe you could write about the relationship between revenge and war. How wars are often started as an act of revenge. Like the Trojan War. It began because King Menelaus wanted revenge against Paris after Paris stole his wife, Helen.” “Maybe,” Medusa said with a shrug. If her snakes had had shoulders, they probably would have shrugged too. “Got any other ideas?” she asked. Calliope didn’t mind that her first idea didn’t appeal to Medusa much. Sometimes it took a few tries to hit on the very thing that would catch someone’s interest and generate true inspiration! Her brown eyes lit up as a new idea came to her. “Or you could write about the psychology of revenge,” she told Medusa. “Like, what causes vengeful feelings, the purpose those feelings se