For our Roman Project (100 Things You Should Know About Ancient Rome - Fiona MacDonald)

Member Name: juicy_lucy

Product:	100 Things You Should Know About Ancient Rome - Fiona MacDonald
Date:	12/12/08 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of information

Disadvantages: For older children there may not be enough information

100 things you should know about ancient Rome

Little Miss has a project to do on Ancient Rome, so it was time to dig out as many books as we could to help her get an insight into the era. A recent visit to the Roman site, Arbeia, found us this book. It looked fairly simple and easy to read, so we added it to our collection.

THE BOOK...

The book itself is paperback with a nice sturdy cover and because it's not too big it's easy for small hands to hold. The front cover has a picture of the colloseum with Roman people inside it and the big number 100 shows us what we can expect- 100 facts.

The contents page tells us that there are 21 topics including: The Centre of an Empire; In the army; Bath time; Having fun; School Days; Digging up Rome. Each section consists of a double page spread feturing facts about the topic in question. Some of the sections have more facts than others, for example, City Life has 5 facts whilst Going Shopping has 3. Each section has an additional part, which isn't a fact and not numbered as such but is either a quiz, something to make (eg a paper mosaic) or an "I Don't believe it!", in which additional facts are given but not numbered...we especially liked the Valentines Day explanantion, in which boys picked a girls name out of a hat and she had to be his girlfriend for the year (quite a stressful time!)

All of the pages have plenty of coloured pictures depicting aspects of Roman times. These are dotted about the page and have the writing about the fact near them so children get the idea that they don't have much reading to do- good news.
Each fact is, as expected, numbered and has its own small title, shown as such because it is written in a bold font. Underneath this short and to the point title, is a little bit of information about that statement. As with all of the information in the book, the text is in an easy to read format and there is enough information to satisfy curious minds but not so much that it overwhelms. The fact that they are numbered also makes it easy for children to remember where they found the fact. If little Miss finds some facts interesting and wants to tell us about it, she directs us to the number of the fact rather than having to go through the whole book or turning down the corner of the page.

OTHER BITS OF INFORMATION...

ISBN: 1842363468

No of pages: 48

Publisher: Miles Kelly Publishing Ltd; 2004

PRICE AND AVAILABILITY...

RRP is £4.99. It can be bought more cheaply so look out for bargains. Available online at amazon and in book stores

VERDICT...

A good information book for young children. At school, children usually do the topic of the Romans in year 3, so aged 7 and 8. This book has just the right amount of information for children of that age. The facts are set out in such a way that once children find the section which interests them, they know that they will find some useful snippets of facts- enough to let them know about the life and times but not so much that it is difficult for them to understand. The additional bits of information keep children interested as do the illustrations.

The size of the book makes it easy for children to hold and the fact that the front and back cover are hardbacked means that it is less likely to get damaged.

For young children interested in this era, i would recommend this book.

Thanks for reading.

Daniela x

Summary: Book about Ancient Rome