This book is very fun to read. It’s essentially a tour through all of ancient art in comic form, Magic School Bus style. A beleaguered but enthusiastic Art History professor loosely based on the author himself leads his teenage students through the art and architecture in Greece and Rome, jumping across time and space in the kind of field trip that Ms. Frizzle would love. The characters jump around the page, change sizes, and break the fourth wall as they move across panels of real-life places as they are today, reconstructions from antiquity, and famous paintings that recreate the past. 

The five students in the class are well-developed characters. They make jokes and ask questions, and generally make the whole experience more fun. The drawings might be cartoonish, but they are amazingly accurate. Folks who have traveled to Athens and Rome will recognize every place that the class visits. The professor even brings in guest instructors to cover important background information about history and culture, such as the poet Sappho, the Greek historian Herodotus, and the great mathematician Hypatia. The special guests include legendary figures like Homer and mythical characters like Athena as well.  

Although this is a comic, it isn’t necessarily aimed at young children. The content is challenging enough for an Advanced Placement Art History class. Also, readers should be aware that the drawings of nude ancient statues are anatomically correct, and the students do a fair amount of casual swearing. Their speech bubbles are written in the colloquial Spanish of Spain, which might prove challenging to American readers. However, the context helps to make the idioms clear. 

The author and illustrator, Pedro Cifuentes, is a professor of social sciences and an award-winning educator. He does an excellent job making the wealth of material accessible and entertaining. This book has already gone through four editions even though it was only published in 2019, which shows how dedicated he is to keep it current. Overall, this book is as good as a college class in ancient civilizations and as entertaining as the Cartoon History of the Universe. There are so many interesting details that readers will read this book over and over again, and still make new discoveries every time.  – Krishni Burns