ESCAPE FROM . . . POMPEII

A patrician boy meets a girl from a traveling troupe of actors on Pompeii’s last day.

Thalia is a musician and actor with a tiny company, returned to Pompeii and the shadow of Mount Vesuvius for the first time since she was a baby. Felix is the son of one of Pompeii’s leading politicians in this city full of light-skinned people in the first-century Roman Empire. When Thalia chases after her runaway dog, she meets Felix, who doesn’t want to be a politician like his father. They don’t have much of an encounter, though they interact several times during an evening in which the water smells suddenly sulfurous and the animals seem to have vanished. When the earthquake comes, they think they’ll be OK—but what to do when ash and pumice stone rain down from above? A casual, prosaic style sometimes adds a touch of humor (Felix amuses his mother, who “tries to stop a laugh and snorts instead”), but sometimes the ellipsis-laden language is just too clunky, especially in the nonfiction notes that close out every chapter. Chilvers’ occasional black-and-white illustrations are equally stiff. The occasional regrettable oversimplification occurs: One of the chapter-ending notes enumerates “churches” among the public establishments of ancient Rome, which may well give young readers a misleading impression of Pompeii’s religious landscape. Series companion Escape From the Titanic, by Mary Kay Carson and also illustrated by Chilvers, publishes simultaneously.

This adventure may briefly entertain.