Perseus et Medusa: A Latin Novella: Volume 2 (Puer Ex Seripho)

Those who have read my review of "Perseus et Rex Malus" will recognise these sentiments, because they equally apply to Part II of this novella, "Perseus et Medusa," and I reproduce them here:It is no place of mine to do down the efforts of anyone who seeks, by an original work, to advance the teaching of Latin, and I wish I could give this book a higher review. The subject matter is interesting enough; the presentation (unusual vocab and short grammar notes as footnotes, comprehensive vocabulary) is helpful, and the illustrations are charming. But. It is difficult to identify the target audience for this novella. The (deliberately) restricted vocabulary will not assist the reader much in building his or hers; the short sentence structure does not much assist in conditioning the reader for any classical Latin style which I recall, either from my former studies, or from pitching gamely back in at the start of this year; and the book is rather irritatingly repetitious, with the expression "[mihi/tibi/sibi] placet" standing out particularly as one which is over-used. I also observe that the size of the font is abnormally large, enough for me to suggest that, while you, dear purchaser, may think that you are buying 74 or 79 pages of Latin text, you are likely to be disappointed in what you receive, and there seems to me to be no good reason why the two parts of this novella could not have been combined in one, with more appropriate text size, for better value. If I were a Latin teacher, I might give these volumes to Year 9 (approx. age 14, assuming students who have begun Latin at 11) as an end-of-term Christmas exercise. They represent a curiosity, not without charm, but hardly essential reading, and not the greatest value for money.Background to the Review:By way of background: I am now in my late 30s, hurtling towards 40. As my new year’s resolution in 2018, I resolved to improve my Latin to the level at which it had been when I was 18, before I went to University. I studied Latin between the ages of 11 and 18, up to and including A-Level (the academic pre-University exams in England and Wales). After a couple of months of relentlessly drilling noun, pronoun, adjective and verb endings, recommitting “hic, haec, hoc” and the imperfect subjunctive to memory, I started casting around for things to read. I knew I wasn’t ready for an Oxford Classical Text, but happily, there are far more accessible Latin textbooks, far more readily available than there were in 1998. These reviews deal with what I discovered, and what I thought of it.