Great as a support text if covering Romans.

A thought provoking book which depicts an awful situation in a child friendly way. Lovely illustrations.

This beautifully illustrated book is all about a boy and his friend who luckily escape Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted.

This book’s language is lovely in the way that it tells the story of what Ancient Rome was like based on the evidence in a way that children can understand and visualise in their heads. It also highlights the reasons why so many lives were tragically lost by explaining that there were lots of tremors in the past.

This story, whilst the characters are fictional, is very real. Looking at the illustrations, you can only imagine how horrendous it must have been to narrowly escape as everything and everything you once loved is killed and destroyed - it’s heart wrenching.

I love how it doesn’t have a happy ending as I feel like it would’ve done Pompeii an injustice. What happened was tragic and real and no story can change that.

This book is part of my year 3/4 class’s Invaders and Raiders topic from the Stone Age into the Ancient Romans. It lends itself really nicely to pottery-making, mosaics, history and geography and I can’t wait to see how the children interpret this beautiful but tragic story.

Genre: Ancient History/Dramatisation
Christina Balit's account of Mount Vesuvius' eruption and subsequent destruction of Ancient Roman Pompeii is an exciting and dramatic read accompanied by the most spectacular of illustrations - the eruption itself almost explodes out of the page. This is an interesting combination of fiction and non-fiction: the eruption of course genuinely happened and the remains of Ancient Roman civilisation it preserved beneath the solidified lava and ash are a major source of archaeological history for the period. The characters we are introduced to along the way however- children Tranio and Livia, Dion and their families - are entirely fictional, although it would rest upon the teacher to explain this to the class because the book itself does not clarify it. Perhaps however the drama of the event could not be properly told - or the beautiful descriptive range of adjectives and adverbs used to depict it - without such characters being employed, and certainly everything else about the portrayal, including the pictures of Ancient Roman theatre, forum and homes, are faithfully factual. History requires the story to inevitably end on a sad note, although children may find the final page depicting bodies buried underground troubling if they have had any personal experience of bereavement. There is a helpful map of the region and a thorough account of Pompeii's discovery in 1748 and Fiorello's plaster-cast replication of bodies using the hollows they had left behind in the ash: Pompeii provides an engaging way for children to discover Ancient Roman life and culture, still meaningful today in Vesuvius' continued presence in Italy and the fact that it remains dormant but not extinct. My pupils were able to write in role, compile their own script to rehearse and act out the eruption (with one child actually playing the part of the volcano in each group), write a descriptive poem using alliteration, onomatopoeia and personification, and link the story to other literature in the form of Caroline Lawrence's gripping Roman Mysteries series (reviewed previously in my Goodreads account!). Perhaps Vesuvius remains the most well-known volcanic eruption in history among adults even today - so there could be plenty of opportunity to link with the geography and science National Curriculum on seismology, tectonic plates and geology: perhaps pupils may even have their own experiences of visiting mountainous or volcanic regions they could share, similar to those of the characters in the story.

Great book to teach from

Great picture book for LKS2.

A really good example of a historical fiction book. Class really liked it, pictures are fab and there is some great description and themes you can draw out of the book!

This is a sad story, but it's well told and the illustrations are interesting. There was a page of historical background after the main story, which is always nice.

A beautiful picture book to use as part of a volcano topic. My year 3s loved it.

Very good

I think this book is very delist full