Marie Carducci Bolchazy

This bilingual picture book is interesting because of its use of an uncommon language – Latin. There are not many books introducing Latin to young readers. However, while this book is useful because of its rarity it did not live up to its full potential. The artwork severely detracted from the book, as the pictures were not engaging nor did they assist the “story.” The format of the book was problematic; instead of printing the word in Latin and English, next to the picture, only the show more Latin was provided. To truly determine what the English equivalent was it was necessary to look at the translation guide in the back of the book. The necessary flipping back and forth was distracting. The glossary, which gave additional vocabulary, and pronunciation guide were useful. show less

This book is a collection of quotations from authors writing in Latin and Greek, along with modern authors' comments. I'm not sure I'm impressed; it's a beautifully laid out book, but the illustrations aren't great and seem irrelevant, and we have 54 quotations in a fairly expensive package. Several commentaries are also very specific to today's US (and invariably from a liberal perspective), which seems a very narrow view for the title and contents.