I enjoyed watching these children fall in love with Egyptian history and culture. This is what I would call a living book. The book begins with April being dropped off at her Grandmother's. She is insecure and hides behind a hoity-toity mask. Grandma tries to help April make friends and through this comes the family from the same apartment complex, Melanie and her young brother, Marshall, begin a small "club" based on their fascination of Ancient Egypt. This game builds up to more members and meets in an alley lot behind a antiques shop with a mysterious owner. There is a scary element to this story and it has to do with 2 murders that happened within 2 years, which does play a part a bit later on in the story. The majority of the story is about the 6 members learning to follow Egyptian rituals, having their own goddess and god that they sacrifice to, hold ceremonies, write their own code, and more.

All in all, it was enjoyable to read. I can see some Christian parents being more cautious with this book which is why I recommend re-reading it before giving it to your children or reading aloud.

I'm pretty sure I read this as a kid, but I have little memory of that, so it was like reading it fresh. I enjoyed the story.

This is the story of a group of kids that start playing a game pretending to be ancient Egyptians in an unused backyard they break into.

This is a good read for any child who is struggling with a recent move or absent parents. It should also be appealing to any child who likes imagination games.

April's mother is going to be a Hollywood star, but until that happens, April has to live with her grandma. She is far from happy about it, but manages to befriend her new neighbor Melanie, the girls discover a shared love of imagination, adventure, and history. What begins as a simple pretend game making Egypt in an abandoned back yard grows as if with a life of its own, with ceremonies, plots, and intrigue. They build their own history and make unexpected friends. And in the face of school, real life, and empty mailboxes, sometimes Egypt is all they have.

Full disclosure, this book will never be talked out of being five stars for me. It has been a favorite since elementary school, and I love this book. Let me tell you why.

April is a bit of an oddball. Her mother is a young, trendy woman, working her way to stardom with bit parts and tours, living a life full of grown-ups and leaving April out of sync with her peers. Around adults she is more comfortable, but around everyone she is cynical and guarded. Even when she grows more adjusted to her home with her grandmother and learns to let her guard down a little bit more, she marches firmly to the rhythm of her own drum. Now, I could tell you some sob story about how I identify with her inability to communicate and form attachments, but it would be a lie. I get on with people quite easily, and largely always have. But I have always been comfortable with adults, and I have always loved wandering through my own imagination. Watching this young lady adeptly handle adults [if not in a very constructive way] and help to construct this wondrous land of Egypt gave me a broad highway with which to connect myself to the text.

[Please remember, I am a good portion Reader-Oriented-Criticism, and I believe a basic connectivity with the text allows a reader to more firmly involve themselves with the story, leading to a more meaningful experience with the book. This is never more true than when a young reader. A book without a reader is just ink and paper.]

Beyond that, the story does a great job of taking you through the story of both April and Melanie feeling each other out, finding what will work in their friendship, seeing how they handle themselves in the real world. The game begins with April and Melanie, quickly coming to include Marshall, Melanie's four year old brother, who is around more by necessity than choice, but joins in the ceremony and role playing as well. As the party continues to grow, the kids still have to figure things out in relation to themselves, each other, and their grand secret.

For those who might be curious, the actual content of information on Egypt is fairly minimal - limited to a few names and factoids the kids use in their game. The information is lovingly assimilated and then repurposed for the usual reasons - roles to fill, stories to tell...you get the idea.

There is so much I would love to talk about, but I don't want to risk spoiling...so, to steal an iconic phrase from my youth...

You don't have to take my word for it.

The Egypt Game is a fun book about two best friends, April and Melanie, who start a game about Egypt. Eventually, there is more than one Egyptian. They meet everyday after school at a secret place between the A-Z Antiques shop and the Curio shop. At first, they were just playing for fun, but will it go to far?
I rated it a 3, because it got a little boring at parts, but it had a good ending. I would recommend this book to some people that like fiction books.

#11 The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder is an interesting novel following young children playing a make-believe game. A young girl named April moves to California so her superstar mom can calm down her career. April soon meets other children, and they play a game where they are Egyptians. They have pretend altars and oracles. Soon, mysterious things happen around the neighborhood, and the Egypt Game is put in peril. This book was a little bit slow, and took me a few dozen pages to get into it. Even though it was slow, after it started I really enjoyed it. This novel was unique, and I haven’t ever really read something like that. I liked it because it was a little bit mysterious, and I really love that genre. This book was realistic fiction, and it was fun to read because it was about young children who I could easily relate to. I don’t find books often that are almost entirely characterized by children, and that was interesting for me. I was not expecting the children to be in it, or for a make-believe game to be so relevant. This novel was mostly just a happy book, with a little bit of sad. I think that the theme for this book is have fun but be careful. The kids were just so involved in “Egypt” that it was a fun game. Even though no harm was meant, they get into some trouble that they could have avoided had they had fun somewhere else. This book was cool to read, and I will likely read it again for a fun, simple read.

Revisiting childhood reads. I loved this back then and I loved it now.

Solid book that made me wonder how I wasn’t murdered or kidnapped as a child.

Age: 11+
Trigger Warnings: Dark mythological content (for kids), blasphemy, murder, adult themes
Library Category: Juvenile (Mythology)

Overview: I originally picked up this book because I'd seen it on multiple "Children's Classics" lists, and when I realized I had a copy at home recently, I figured it couldn't hurt to try this one out. I have to say I wasn't really impressed. I would have stopped reading it, but I really hate doing that. Even though I'm not in the target age range anymore, I don't think it would have interested me all that much even then.

The Characters: The characters were diverse, but it felt forced; there was no real distinction throughout the book, just the fact that in the beginning their skin color was mentioned (there was a white girl, a black girl, and an Asian girl as main characters, to be more specific). I never felt like I really related to the characters; at age 11 I wasn't playing dress-up anymore, but I also wasn't speaking with their sophisticated language. The whole thing just felt a little off.

The Writing: I can't deny that for a children's book, the writing is reasonable - although I have to hypothesize that this was most likely because it was published in 1967, when people didn't think they had to dumb everything down for kids.

The Plot and the Ending: I think the plot was paced relatively well, but it felt super long to me - probably because I just wasn't invested in the story. The book was completely anticlimactic and the ending didn't feel very natural. It was like the author didn't really know what to do, so she just threw down her first idea in order to end the book as soon as possible.

Quotes I actually liked (although these are some of the things a normal 11-year-old would never say in real life):

(1) April: "I guess everybody has something they're not very grown-up about" (58).

(2) April: "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" (215).

Possibly offensive content: If you're very religious, or a parent concerned about what your kid is reading for religious reasons, you may want to wait until they're older, as the book is largely about worshipping Egyptian gods and goddesses - even the evil ones (this is where dark mythological content comes in). In my opinion, the problem with this is that I probably wouldn't have been allowed to read this book (content-wise) until I was too old for the writing level anyways. If you want more information on content to be wary of, I suggest you check out Luisa Knight's review here, as she goes much more in-depth.

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, but maybe I'm just a little too old for the book and can't appreciate it fully. If you think that's the case, go ahead and read it. I hope you find me wrong about this book!

THE EGYPT GAME
Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Although this is an old book where kids use their imagination to create games, played outside, and without their parents watching I really, really enjoyed the book. Yes, it is a middle school book, but it was written in the late 60s when I think children were not as coddled and were a bit more mature.
I loved that the girls were big readers, loved the library, and overall made their own entertainment.

The group starts with 2 little girls in 6th grade and one little four-year-old tag along. After finding an abandoned storage yard they create their own game about Egypt. They do the research, create costumes, and engage with historical play.

For me, it was well worth the read.

5 stars

Happy Reading!

My kids are enjoying this audiobook, but I'm not a fan of the narration. It's too slow and lacking in animation to hold my interest. I thought I didn't like the story, but when left the audio to the kids and started reading the book on my own, I enjoyed it much more. Review of the non-audio book to follow.

A ragtag group of children form a secret society, complete with an oracular statue, in an abandoned lot. To this day, I eye abandoned lots in the hopes of having my own Egypt Game.