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Rating: 
Summary: Wow... talk about poor execution!
Review: It sounds like a great idea... instead of presenting ancient Roman history in a typical, dry academic way, why not do it in a newspaper style format? Y'know, pretend that you're really reading *headlines* from an ancient newspaper that covered key events in ancient Roman history as they happened? Sounds great! What better way than to present history to children?
It's a great idea, but the execution is absolutely lousy. First of all, the way the book presents itself is 100% misleading. When you first hear of the concept, your first instinct is to think that it's going to be similar to The Onion's "Our Dumb Century," where that book had stories that were written in a journalistic style as if they had been written at the time of the event they were covering. But when you eventually sit down and examine this book, you realize that the articles are still written from the perspective of historians writing about the past. In fact, many of the articles-- such as Hannibal's invasion and Caesar's assassination-- are nothing more than a retrospective looking back on them, presumably by writers from a later period of Roman history giving their perspective on earlier ancient Roman events that preceded them by hundreds of years. Because of that glitch, the very premise of the book is lost.
Another couple of faults with this book: it lacks a sense of chronology and is absolutely spotty in its coverage of ancient Roman events. In the first three articles we get: the founding of Rome; the invasion of Hannibal; and the assassination of Julius Caesar! (Wow- out of nearly 700 years of history, just *those* three events were important enough to cover? Hmmmm.) Another great example of the spottiness is in the article about Pompeii. This article mentions that Pompeii was rocked by Vesuvius. But Pompeii was not the only city that was destroyed by the eruption. What about Herculaneum? What about Stabiae? I mean, if you're going to write about Pompeii, why not throw in a mention of those other sites as well, especially Herculaneum?
Problems like this type of selectivity abound. You have an article on one Roman Emperor (Vespasian's victory in Palestine) but nothing about any of the more well known ones, including Constantine! (Huh?) You have no articles about other famous Romans or key figures, such as Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and you don't mention the Great Fire of Rome. You don't even mention Christianity! How is a child supposed to learn history when the history is presented in a spotty fashion like this? This selectivity makes the book so half hearted and incomplete that you wonder why the authors even bothered in the first place.
My last complaint is that I thought the art design was kinda goofy. If this book is supposed to be a newspaper, why are there glossy, colored Bizley-type illustrations throughout? Why wasn't there an attempt to try and make it look like a real black and white, ink on your fingers newspaper? Why not be creative with it and really go out of the way to make it feel like a newspaper, complete with ancient Roman style graphics? What a missed opportunity! Blech.
So I really thought this was a well-intentioned, yet poorly executed book. Now don't get me wrong-- I appreciate the good intentions of the people behind it, but they could have tried a little harder, especially since it was geared towards children. My verdict? Two stars from me.
Rating: 
Summary: The Roman Inquirer
Review: This book imitates the typical newspaper format. An index indicates the various events that were pivotal for the development of Roman culture and government. The events portion is set up chronologically, but the other sections cover societal topics such as sports, political life, women's pages, food pages. The graphics are colorful and include illustrations, charts, and maps in imitation of modern newspapers and magazines. It was interesting to us and it is our belief that the similarity to modern print media will intrigue students.
Rating:
Summary: The Roman Inquirer
Review: This thin book is certainly very attractive with its many graphics and easygoing style and probably in the end does stimulate interest for younger readers to try to find out more. It would have been nice however if some controversial conclusions about Roman history were not presented as fact. For example, it is not universally agreed that Romulus was an historical person or that 753 BC is the actual date of the founding of the city. While I fully realize that the conceit of the book is that it is supposed to be a view of the world as the Romans themselves saw it, that does not excuse giving wrong information. Anyway, the Romans certainly did not use the term BC which is freely used here. And these are not the only cases. It would have been nice if the Colosseum were also given its proper name for example, the Flavian Amphitheater. It is surprising to see Diocletian criticized for dividing the empire as this is not universally considered harmful by historians. And so on. I'm not entirely sure I agree with the ordering of the book either. Initially it goes in chronological order and then this is totally abandoned as one skips ahead to Constantine, then back to Vespasian, forward to Hadrian, etc. Overall, the book is worth buying, but an annotated guide to go with it would be quite helpful.
Rating: 
Summary: Wanted to like it more than I did
Review: This thin book is certainly very attractive with its many graphics and easygoing style and probably in the end does stimulate interest for younger readers to try to find out more. It would have been nice however if some controversial conclusions about Roman history were not presented as fact. For example, it is not universally agreed that Romulus was an historical person or that 753 BC is the actual date of the founding of the city. While I fully realize that the conceit of the book is that it is supposed to be a view of the world as the Romans themselves saw it, that does not excuse giving wrong information. Anyway, the Romans certainly did not use the term BC which is freely used here. And these are not the only cases. It would have been nice if the Colosseum were also given its proper name for example, the Flavian Amphitheater. It is surprising to see Diocletian criticized for dividing the empire as this is not universally considered harmful by historians. And so on. I'm not entirely sure I agree with the ordering of the book either. Initially it goes in chronological order and then this is totally abandoned as one skips ahead to Constantine, then back to Vespasian, forward to Hadrian, etc. Overall, the book is worth buying, but an annotated guide to go with it would be quite helpful.
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