My Brother Plato

LoveReading4Kids Says

Eight-year-old Potone has a lot to put up with. She lives in Athens with her mum, stepdad and their merged families, the war with Sparta is rumbling on in the background and things just feel very unfair. She’s not wrong – life for girls and women in Ancient Greece was unfair – and on top of everything else, her little brother Plato is really annoying.

He picks on the words she uses for example and twists them round, so she has to try to put him right. Their constant arguing develops their debating skills no end, which is just as well when their beloved dog Tigris is accused of attacking their mean stepbrother Demos. A trial is held – can the children argue Tigris’s case convincingly?

The judge is no other than their dad’s friend, Socrates. As the author explains in notes to readers at the back, the characters in the story are all real people – it’s THE Plato – and even though the trial is made up, the arguments the two children use would definitely have Plato’s approval. In fact, readers will pick up lots of Plato’s ideas during the course of the book, and a sense of him – and his sister, who of course we know much less about – as clever, interesting, full of life and questions; someone you’d really like to get to know better in fact. A quirky, appealing introduction to Greek philosophy.

Andrea Reece

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