A GREEK ADVENTURE

Three young time travelers fall into an ancient Athenian infodump.

Characteristic of other entries in the Histronauts series, this one sees light-skinned Newton and Luna and olive-skinned Nani, along with Luna’s cat, Hero, abruptly chucked into ancient Greece, where they stand around uttering bland comments (“These pots are beautiful.” “What’s happening over there?”) or minilectures in cleanly drawn panels that are often crowded out by galleries of historical and mythological figures, charts, or bulleted fact lists, and instructions for simple crafts projects. A friendly Athenian skeuopoios (theatrical mask maker) squires the group from an amphitheater through the Agora to his sister’s house for exposures to food and family life, then on to the Acropolis to witness the Great Panathenaea festival. While encountering classical art, handicrafts, and significant buildings along the way, readers will also skip past quick discussions of pottery making, Athenian society and government, philosophers, storytelling, and even slavery. (Despite much mention of Greek theater, though, the young visitors are whisked back to their own era before they can actually see a play.) Related activities include recipes, a word search using the Greek alphabet, a maze with a Minotaur to avoid, and a quiz at the end. Cooke portrays the crowds in the streets and the gods on Olympus as distinctly brown-skinned.

A data-driven dive, surprisingly deep for all that it’s limited to just one late, great city-state.