*3.75 stars*

Re-read. I remember playing the same paper doll game that the girls did. Still have them.

**Read for summer reading program — “award winning book”.

Another great one from childhood. I have to do a reread as details are foggy. I did not love it as much as The Velvet room and The Changeling but it was still a great little book..plus I love books having anything to do with Egypt!

This book brought back to me all the games I played in my youth. I practically belonged inside this book. It was good to remember how great your imagination is as a child.

First published in 1967, this book was written around the time I was the same age as the youngest member of the characters. It was awarded a Newbery Honor in its day and I think I can figure out why. It features a cast of characters that is diverse, and a neighborhood that is a little run down and seedy, and single mothers (and grandmothers) raising their children. Coming off the 1950s Leave It to Beaver Generation, this book would have seemed pretty edgy.

I think it doesn't play as well with current audiences, however. The first half of the book moves way too slowly and there is the question of children being allowed to run wild all day without any parental supervision. Will kids buy it? Hmm.

I don't understand the reviews that say this is banned book. Really? I can't think of anything in it that is ban-worthy, except some people might think that children shouldn't be playing at worshipping Egyptian gods and goddesses. But it is clearly a child's pretend game, and does speak to a child's imagination being more entertaining than basketball or television.

It's nice when a childhood favourite holds up decades later. I read this book several times in elementary school when it first came out, and when I started seventh grade I was thrilled to see a huge section of books on Egypt in the highschool library. I proceeded to read a lot of them!

Coming back to this book 4 decades later, I noticed a whole plot thread that had zipped over my innocent little head back then. How did I miss the whole serial-child-killer scare that keeps the kids indoors for weeks? Maybe I was more caught up in their imagination games. In a time when two year olds can handle their parents' tablets and smartphones to watch cartoons or play Angry Birds, I wonder if today's kids could create their own worlds like this, with only an empty lot to play in. No, I'm not being snarky; I'm curious. Snyder repeats a motif from many of her books: the desire of children to have a secret hideout where they can be by themselves with no interference, and play imagining games. I just learned this book is banned in several places. And yet they let their kids watch TV or go online and find much worse stuff.

It was interesting how the kids created their own ceremonies etc. I bet that's how the original Egyptians got started, on a different level. "Oh, the rains haven't come...what can we do?" "Let's try this." "No--THIS." "Cool! Yeah, let's try that."

Based on Wanda’s excellent review, as well as my own fondness for ancient Egypt, I picked up this young adult book to see what I was missing. I found it reasonably entertaining, although I couldn’t help wishing it was fleshed out a little further.

April has been sent to live with her grandmother and she is resenting it. All of that changes when she meets the upstairs girl, Melanie, her precocious four-year-old brother, Marshall, and his adorable stuffed octopus, Security. They start out telling stories with Melanie’s elaborate paper families but it soon progresses into playacting when they discover an apparently abandoned back yard. Other people are added to their imaginative play. Imagination time becomes compromised when a real-life murder occurs in a nearby neighborhood and their parents are reluctant to allow them outside.

“Well,” April and Melanie said to each other–only just with a look, not out loud, “wasn’t that like a boy. They got things into a mess and then expected a girl to get them out of it.”

I think this would have been a perfect book for me around age nine. Themes involve friends, differences, imagination and secrets. April’s loss of her home with her mother is one of the themes that weaves through the background, adding a humanizing touch to her and showing the way these issues can be processed in the background and not always need processing out loud. Characters, particularly the three that begin the game, seem reasonably well developed. I particularly love the understated way April and Melanie end up become best friends without needing to label it as such. I also liked the way April’s grandmother, Caroline, was portrayed, an understated background role that gave April a chance to develop in her new home. One of the strengths of the book was the feeling of authenticity in their dialogue. Bonus point for having a cast that represented a variety of ethnicities and family structures.

Plotting was fine. I was intrigued by the section with the oracle, as I wasn’t sure where the story was headed, fantastical or real-world, and I’m not sure the children knew either. Some may say that a murder in a children’s book is inappropriate; I disagree. I think it was handled perfectly well, and the children displayed the same self-centeredness that many children in that age group do when coping with such issues. I did find the wrap-up to be somewhat awkward, however. However, an emotionally satisfying ending.

Many young adult books feel the need to pose children and adults in opposing relationships, it was refreshing to encounter adults who allowed kids to get about the business of being kids. The girls are wrapped up in the world of imagination, although they certainly have moments in school and at home where the real world intrudes. I loved the mention of asking a teacher about oracles and leading her off-track. It reminds me of all the games I and my various playmates concocted; the hours spent prepping, the obsessions with getting something ‘right’ according to some mysterious nine-year-old definition of what ‘right’ was.

“When somebody saves your life, it makes him sort of your property, and nobody was going to make fun … with April around.”

Three-and-a-half stars, rounding up because of Egypt and best friends.

I loved this as a kid. Zilpha was one of my favorite authors in the 80s. There was John Bellairs, Judy Blume and Zilpha Synder. Back then I couldn't even say her name. Headless Cupid was my favorite book back then. This was another great of hers.

A group of neighborhood children find a building with fun stuff where they come up with a game about Egyptian gods and goddesses. They set up alters and even an oracle. The game gets real when they start getting real answers back. As a kid, I remember this was creepy as hell and I felt so proud to make it through.

I reread it and it was still spooky and charming. I didn't appreciate the diversity growing up with the characters, but Zilpha was rocking back in the 60s. I think I need to read her and John Bellairs. Zilpha did some good stuff and I should read of catalog. Another project.

This is still good mystery, still creepy and still really interesting with all the Egyptian references and history. It's a fun book. I'm glad this got the Newberry.

When I first came across this book in 1975, I was seven years-old and was totally into everything ancient Egypt. I'd seen the King Tut exhibit twice, read everything both fact and fiction about the civilization and was so geeky that I tought myself to write in hieroglyphics (which was fun when it came to passing secret messages). Imagine my delight when the wonderful librarian at my elementary school (I wish I could remember her name because she helped feed my Egypt fix) gave me this book. I literally devoured it overnight and re-read it as many time as I could before it was due. It was the first time I ever considered stealing a library book because I was so in love with it and didn't want to give it back! Luckily I didn't have to since she gave it to me.

It's a rather simple premise really: a bunch of very imaginative kids, most of whom are misfits, get together and create their own ancient Egyptian-styled world, complete with homemade costumes and props scrounged from the junk found in the abandoned back area where they created their "Egypt". There's a creepy old man who runs a thrift-antique store and a murder mystery, and even a dark and stormy night.

Melanie and her brother Marshall (with his stuffed toy octopus), April, Elizabeth, Ken and Toby were the childhood friends I longed for. Melanie was me. Even now, forty-something years later this book feels timeless, even with the anachronistic use of the word "negroes" (which only appears twice in the narrative) to describe Melanie and Marshall who are black. Hey, this was the late 60's and yes, we were called "negro" back then, though "black" and "afro-American" were slowly coming into wider use.

This book was written in 1967 during the turbulent 60's. The struggle for equal rights was in full swing. What made The Egypt Game stand out from so many books at the time was the ethnic diversity of the characters, something the YA genre is woefully behind on even now. When I read about Melanie Ross, it's as if Ms. Snyder had been watching me, this geeky black girl with pigtails as my eyes lit up over color-it-yourself tomb paintings and my cut-out pictures of King Tut's funeral mask from National Geographic. I had a role model and a kindred spirit.

With some books, the diversity aspect is just there or just window dressing. There are authors who throw in an ethnic character or two and have them do nothing throughout the narrative. Ms. Snhyder didn't do that. These were smart kids from diverse backgrounds. They were also kindred spirits in their love of a magnificent ancient culture, and yet they're still kids (although perhaps a little smarter than their peers).

I've always dreamed that someone who loved this book as much I do would make this a movie or a series. On the other hand, considering Hollywood's penchant for fucking up the most beloved of stories (with a few notable exceptions), I'm actually glad they haven't. I could just imagine the entire cast turned into The Last Airbender type fail. Maybe it's best that my beloved and dog-eared The Egypt Game stays the magical book it has always been.

I coined the genre ‘non crime mystery’, to resolve the mislabelling of the books I seek. Naturally, publishers must use it. Some called Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s work fantasy. She wrote about secrets children bring to light. My introduction was “The Truth About Stone Hollow”, 1974. Weak, countrified grammar was distancing to me. However, except spending awhile on family drama, I liked it and gave it 4 stars.

“The Egypt Game” is 7 years older but infinitely more relatable and modern. City apartment blocks in Canada of the late 1970s were my playground and our move to suburbia in the 1980s was similar. We told our parents where and with whom we were and we could frolic nearby until dusk. I remember the threat of predators the novel conveyed. We were taught to be on hyper alert and watch our siblings. However, the freedom to run outside and creatively play was important.

Like most people, I took this title for magic, or a trip to Egypt but admired it as soon as I recognized what it is: an authentic tableau of 1967 city children. Simply by writing the way things were, all races and incomes of children were friends together. Even two curious jocks delight in a private place to be inventive and command their own world. This part, about discarding school images and allowing themselves to be children together, is the most beautiful element. It reminds me a bit of “The Breakfast Club” film. If kids just go outside and make up ways to play with material available to them, it will be fun.

A mysterious atmosphere comes from the curio store owner of their scrap yard. Also, the oracle the children made-up.... should not be capable of answering them! My appreciation of this gem is valued at 5 stars.

I was happy with this book. Zilpha Keatley Snyder shows herself to be a writer of the first rank, meting out humor, suspense, and some genuine drama at a nicely maintained pace. The Egypt Game rings with kid-friendly dialogue and characters, effectively camouflaging the author's presence. A good story often seems as though it wasn't written at all, but actually happened, magically appearing on the page as the events occurred. The Egypt Game is one such book.

I enjoyed this novel, and would recommend it with a solid two and a half stars.

I remember loving this book as a girl. It was mysterious and full of delicious and erudite details. I was in the mood to reread a favorite middle grade novel, and had apparently previously given it five stars. I'd rate it three stars now, but I'm leaving one additional star for nostalgia purposes.

Like the gamers say at the end of the story: "And it's just awful when you go back to something that was so great the way you remembered it, and it's no good anymore. It even ruins remembering.