Night Shift by Debi Gliori #bookreview

Debi Gliori, the writer and illustrator of this book, normally creates books for children. This book, on the other hand, is aimed at an older age group as it covers depression.

The afterword explains that she has been "spending most of [her] adult life living through periods of depressive illness" and that her "hope is that this book will help explain what we are going through."

The rest of the book is a series of small black-and-white drawings with little bits of text which tell the story of a female character and her struggle with depression, the depression being represented by a dragon. Luckily it has a happy ending which I thought was nicely done both in the words and the final picture, the way the dragon has disappeared and become something else. 

The book takes a few minutes to read as it is short but the art is good. The black-and-white illustrations suit it given the subject matter. Perhaps the final picture could have been in full colour to emphasise the "shift" that occurs. Maybe this book will help others with depressive illnesses, or help introduce the topic to youngsters so they can better understand it, and if it does then that is a good thing.

Amazon UK link: Night Shift

Gory Gladiators, Savage Centurions and Caesar's Sticky End (Awfully Ancient) #bookreview

Book review: History was never cool when I went to school. Nowadays, though, thanks to Horrible Histories, it is the epitome of cool. This book has clearly been influenced by the Horrible History series of books - look at the alliteration in the title for one, Awfully Ancient, Gory Gladiators. But that is no bad thing. If it makes the subject more interesting by focusing on the "oodles of blood and gore and horribly nasty deaths" and it grabs the attention of the reading kids then maybe they will maintain that interest. 

This book focuses on the time of the Roman Empire. "What did they ever do for us?" I hear you ask. Well, this book tells you. It covers "Ceasar's sticky end" and many similar ends of other Roman emperors, it tells you what a vomitorium was, and it covers what a Roman's usual eating habits were during a time before fridges in a chapter called "Peacock Brains and Flamingo Tongues." There are some interesting facts here too. Like how the average slave "cost less than a horse or a cow". And how only emperors were allowed to wear purple, anyone else being killed.

The layout is appealing too. There are 32 full-colour pages of text with pictures following the same fun art style as seen on the cover. At the end, there are also some books and websites listed as suggested further reading, although all the books are by the same publisher. There are also some places listed to visit, all in Britain, which might be worth looking at.

On things that could improve this book, it is short at 32 pages so could have been longer (although to maintain interest for the age group and possibly reluctant readers you could say it is better to be shorter). 

All-in-all then this is a book that introduces the topic of the Romans and their empire in a fun way that may lead to a maintained interest in history.

GORY GLADIATORS, SAVAGE CENTURIONS AND CAESAR'S STICKY END (AWFULLY ANCIENT)