#21- You Wouldn't Want to Be a Roman Gladiator!

#21- You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Roman Gladiator!

You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Roman Gladiator!

Written by: John Malam

Illustrated by: David Antram

Franklin Watts Grolier Publishing Co., Inc., 2003

29 pages

Historical Fiction

“Your fate is out of your control, but you can be sure of one thing-you wouldn’t want to be a Roman gladiator!”

This book starts out by putting you in the role of a Gaul whose tribe has just been invaded by Romans. Throughout the rest of the book, you are captured, sold, and trained to fight in the arena. The book is filled with many interesting facts, as well as funny captions to accompany the vibrant pictures. The book also gives you “handy hints” to help you stay alive during this process. At the end of the story, your body is dragged out of the arena, and another man is declared the victor of the fight. There is a glossary provided in the back of the book to explain some of the content-specific vocabulary.

The medium is not listed for this book, but it looks like Antram used watercolor and pen to create the vibrant and cartoon-like drawings. Each page contains a large picture on a double page spread that portrays the main idea of that page. Vignettes are incorporated on the pages to accompany interesting facts pulled from the text.

This book is appropriate for fourth to fifth grade level readers. It would be advantageous for the students to have this book available for them to read during a unit on Rome. A good activity to do would be to have students fold their paper into sections. On each section, they would illustrate the stages that the book describes to becoming a Roman gladiator. They would write a short sentence to explain their pictures.