Start Plutarch a decade early. Finish with the real thing.
And Marcus Aurelius, and Machiavelli, and Beowulf, and…
🤓 😍 📚
We take the subjects other publishers skip and build each one into a ladder of books, from first picture book to a prep book for the real Parallel Lives.
Ages 0–4
Read to them
Ages 3–7
Read to them + Read together
Ages 6–10
Read together + Read alone
Ages 10–14
Final prep for the original source
Newest release
Marcus Aurelius
Big Ideas · Ages 0–10
Marcus Aurelius, taught three ways. The youngest readers get the habit itself: a little book, an honest look back at bedtime, and trying again tomorrow. Ages 3–7 get the emperor's real tools, getting ready for a hard day, holding still when anger pulls, shrinking a giant problem, in words a young child can use tonight. And ages 6–10 get the man behind the Meditations: the plague, the frozen frontier, the son he couldn't reach, and the nightly practice that kept his book alive for two thousand years.
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Alfred the Great
Ages 0–12 · 4 books
A king who hides in a swamp, burns a stranger’s bread, then rallies a comeback that saves an entire country, and his real secret weapon turns out to be books.
Machiavelli
Ages 0–10 · 3 books
For five hundred years “Machiavellian” has meant sneaky and untrustworthy, but the man behind the word was neither.
Stoicism
Ages 0–10 · 3 books
A toppled block tower on a Tuesday morning is the exact problem Marcus Aurelius was working out in his journal: what do you do when something you cannot control wrecks your day?
Don Quixote
Ages 0–10 · 3 books
The most famous novel in the world, and most people don’t read it until college, if they read it at all.
Beowulf
Ages 0–10 · 3 books
The oldest story in English literature nearly burned in a library fire in 1731, and survived by inches.
New series
Plutarch’s Lives for Kids
The two-thousand-year-old paired lives, built at four reading levels, from first picture book to Plutarch-ready.
Free printable pack
Read Plutarch with your kids
Get the free Plutarch family pack: the 25-pair Parallel Lives wall map, a parent’s guide to starting early, and a four-level sampler of Alexander & Caesar. Plus one email when each new book goes live. No noise.