Adventures in Ancient Greece

This series is designed for the 4-6th grade audience and as such has a lot of silliness between the characters. It is this fun approach that makes the book a drawing read and lets this age group learn a lot about history without feeling the pain of a text book. My kids have learned a lot from this series and love to read them over and over. We have been able to get a couple of the books in this series in French and they are great easy readers for those learning French as well.

Another homeschooler recommended this book to us as one book to read for our study of Ancient Greece. When my 6 year-old son saw the cover he begged for me to read it immediately. He loved the book and is asking if there are others available (which there are because this is one in a series). We had just finished "Growing up in Ancient Greece" by Chris Chelipi which I thought was a bit boring. "Adventures in Ancient Greece" duplicated the same information and included additional information. So if you are wondering if this comic book style book (less serious tone) is lacking in content, I can assure you that it is not.The format of the book is comic book style with sidebars that read more like a regular text. The storyline is that a boy and his two sisters enter a time travel-travel agency and request to go to the next Olympic games in the future. By mistake they are transported to Ancient Greece. A boy gives them a tour of Athens and explains daily life in Ancient Greece. They experience daily living such as the role of women, slaves, and foreign visitors vs. men, voting, worship, parties, and common foods eaten. They also find themselves in the middle of a war that is called to a truce before casualties occur, at the Olympics, and finally on a warship that is engaged in a war before coming back home, magically. There is some sarcasm and some silliness. Some of the sarcasm borders on disrespect, such as when the boy gives them olives to eat, and proclaims they are the best in the world and the boy thinks, "this is a treat?" The girl is annoyed that women lead subservient lives and makes some sarcastic comments. I chose to skip over some of the silly and sarcastic comments. In the end I know my son learned important content from this book, which is the goal!