Pompeii: A Lost City

Pompeii: A Lost City (2008) Post 355, is in the same series as the books about Titanic and The Trojan Horse. Like those, this has a true story with a lot of facts that fascinate children (and adults), but again, like the other two, it was tricky to present the facts in a way suited to readers of eight or so. Look at the facts; Titanic sank and a lot of people died, many of them unnecessarily. It was a disaster. The Troy story is rife with adultery, revenge, murder and more unnecessary death. Pompeii sort of takes the cake, with so many people dying from the poisonous volcanic fumes, before being buried in lava. So, there were the facts, which had to be presented without undue fuss and colour. We have A Bustling City, Everyday Life, Warning Signs, Eruption in Pompeii, Eruption in Herculanium... and then we go though more chapters to Pompeii Today, Amazing Discoveries and such. The book is beautifully illustrated and it was interesting to write but, as I said, difficult. But... maybe kids today see so much disaster on the News

they're not much affected by something that happened so very long ago.

ABOUT THE BLOG

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist.  isn't an encyclopaedia of fantasy creatures as it first appears. Instead, it's a collection of character drawings and paintings with written descriptions. The artist and I treated the book more or less as we might have treated animal portraits or pictures of famous people of the past, giving each one a personality and a place in the general scheme of things. I loved working on this collection, because dreaming up characters and world-building with them is one of my favourite things to do.