cover image The Thrifty Guide to Ancient Rome: A Handbook for Time Travelers

The Thrifty Guide to Ancient Rome: A Handbook for Time Travelers

Jonathan W. Stokes, illus. by David Sossella. Viking, $17.99 (144p) ISBN 978-1-101-99808-3

In the year 2163, the past is the new luxury vacation destination: with this travel guide in hand, readers are invited to visit ancient Rome by hopping in their Time Corp Time Machine Sedan. Stokes (the Addison Cooke series) keeps up the tongue-in-cheek conceit throughout, offering readers advice about the perils of the era (“Time Corp’s legal department requires us to mention that if the fires don’t kill you, the floods probably will”) and entertainment options (“Romans also enjoy a great variety of sports and spectacles, most of which involve witnessing violent death, all for a very attractive price”), as well as information on various rulers and conflicts. Sossella brings a droll sense of humor to his engravinglike cartoons, and sidebars offering “helpful hints,” dispatches from Time Corp’s unsavory corporate overlord, and faux Yelp-style reviews (“I only got to eat one family,” complains a lion in a one-star review of the Flavian Amphitheater) round out a very funny tour of Rome’s bloody and tumultuous past. Also available: The Thrifty Guide to the American Revolution. Ages 8–12. Author’s agent: Brianne Johnson, Writers House. (Jan.)