My Family and Other Romans

Marie Basting's My Family and Other Romans is a very funny adventure for 9 year olds about a girl whose dad is a bit TOO into Ancient Rome.

What happens

Silvia Fortuna Juno De Luca (Livi to her dad) is twelve and lives practically on top of Hadrian's Wall. She spends her weekends at LARP, which is live-action role-play, where people dress up and battle with foam swords. Her dad has been wearing a centurion's cape for a month. He gets her attention by firing an arrow at the door knocker.

Livi loves it really. But a boy called Rory Smartwart has started calling her a loser, and her old friends keep being busy. So just as Dad's big dream, a Roman festival called Rome Play, is about to open, Livi says some things she can't take back.

That night Dad goes missing. The DVD player shows a strange little boy in a toga and refuses to switch off, even at the plug. And grumpy Mrs Burden next door turns out to be a lot more than a grumpy neighbour. (We won't say what, but it involves steam coming out of her ears, and not as a figure of speech!)

Before long Livi is following a boy with a torch up the hill, through a triumphal arch that wasn't there before, and into somewhere that's definitely not the Rome Play site.

Livi talks straight to you, and she's hilarious. Her heart sinks "like an orc in lead boots". She has a theory about why you should never trust a cow (it's their eyes). Her dad believes hot chocolate fixes everything.

Underneath the jokes there's something tender too. Livi's mum left when she was a baby, and she and her dad have always been a team. Who hasn't been a tiny bit embarrassed by a parent and felt terrible about it straight after?

If you've got a reader who likes their history with plenty of silliness mixed in, this is a winner. They'll pick up a fair bit about Roman Britain along the way, from forts to the soldiers' open-plan toilets.

What to read next

If they're after more Roman mischief, try Julius Zebra: Rumble with the Romans! Julius is a grumpy zebra who hates the smelly watering hole, and he ends up a very long way from home in Rome itself.