One of my favorite books as a child, along with "Harriet the Spy" by Louise Fitzhugh, appealed to my sense of adventure and secrecy.

I really struggled with this one, probably because it wasn't what I wanted it to be about. I was hoping for some time travel or something, or to be more engaging like a Rick Riordan book that entertains AND teaches. I felt it was really dated and I wonder who I'll be able to pass it off to in class.

Two girls make up some rituals based on some Egyptian rituals they read about. They play in a storage yard behind a store in town. The man who runs the store is sort of mysterious, and when things start to go wrong in town, he is a suspect. The friendships between the kid characters did seem real, especially when a couple of boys from school want to get in on the "game." They are torn between wanting to get involved in the secret game and wanting to just play basketball and be cool at school. The side story of one character being abandoned by her mother, her relationship with her grandmother, and dealing with being the new girl at school was the most interesting part of this book.

The kiddos loved this one, though I forgot from my childhood love of it that parts of it are a little dark for the seven-year-old (child murder subplot)...

Adored this book as a child. One of the books I read over and over and over, endlessly. I should give it another look one of these days.

I found this book charming mostly for its descriptions of tweens joyously recreating the altars and costumes of ancient Egypt in an abandoned field. They read books about Egypt and imitate the rituals of high priest and priestesses; they communicate with each other at school in coded hieroglyphics; and scour the neighborhood for the grocer’s crates and the florist’s clippings for altars and offerings.

Underlying their play are darker forces. Children have recently been abducted in the neighborhood and some people suspect the old man who runs the antique shop next to the field where the children play.

The creepy child murder story line seems a bit at odds with the Egypt imagination play; however, I can imagine as a tween (I am 54 now) reading this book in the 1970s, I would have found the grown up murder/danger elements compelling.

“As a matter of fact, the Egyptians hadn’t really realized until then just how great Egypt had been. It had been a terrific game, full of excitement and mystery and way-out imagining, but it had been a great deal more than that. It had been a place to get away to - a private lair - a secret seclusion meant to be shared with best friends only - a life unknown to grown-ups and lived by kids alone. And now, all of a sudden, it was gone.“

A glimpse back into the world of childhood and imagination and a great read.

Okay. You may be asking yourself, “Why is this guy reviewing a 1967 children’s book?” I’ll tell you why. It’s because I think everyone should read this book. I will explain my reasoning in a moment but first I want to tell you how I stumbled across this book in the first place.

A few months ago I received a comment from a reader who claimed that the Vox Oculis book series was “a mix of Zilpha Keatley Snyder and Daniel Koontz (without the mommy issues).” I had no idea what that meant because I had never read Koontz and I had never even heard of ZKS. So I went out and picked up a used copy of ZKS’s The Egypt Game. (Never mind Koontz for now. I’ll cover him in another review someday. Maybe).

One thing you should understand right off the bat about The Egypt Game is that when it came out in the ’60s it was controversial. The reason? It talked about stuff that just wasn’t talked about back then, and certainly not stuff that was considered normal fare for a children’s book. Creepy shopkeepers, single parenthood, occult rituals, even a child murder. That type of content was so novel and controversial, The Egypt Game wound up on several banned book lists, yet went on to win a Newberry Honor award and a Lewis Carroll Shelf award. (Awards seem to be a common characteristic of a lot of banned books). That it is a target of book bans is, in itself, reason enough to make The Egypt Game worthy reading.

But there is more that makes The Egypt Game a worthwhile read. For me, it was a rediscovery of the pleasure of reading a children’s adventure novel. Reading The Egypt Game revived memories of the last children’s books I read, the excellent Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins. However, unlike Gregor, published in 2003, The Egypt Game was published in 1967, smack dab in the middle of my own '60s childhood, when we used words like “neat” instead of “cool” and “rat fink” instead of “jerk face.” These, and other '60s gems are found throughout the book and it is fun when they pop up out of the blue and inject a bit of nostalgia (for folks my age) or novelty (for the younger adults) into the read.

One thing that strikes me is the similarity between Gregor and The Egypt Game in terms of the commonality of themes, themes we often believe are only endemic to our current era, themes that are sometimes dark and disturbing. We are reminded that mental illness, child homicide, broken homes, single parenthood, and scary adults are nothing new. In Egypt, these themes are woven into an otherwise light-hearted story about a group of kids that together pretend they are ancient Egyptians. That it is viewed from an eight-year-old’s eyes—an eight-year-old growing up in the 1960s—reminds us that children at that age are still innocent and naive while at the same time, resilient and imaginative.

One theme in particular stood out to me in this story and that was the race and class-agnostic sensibilities of the young characters—kids that were White, Black, Asian, poor, rich, and everything in between. There were no race or class enmities between them. They were just a bunch of kids sharing a great game that they created themselves—what today would be called an RPG—and they viewed the dark events of the book with a youthful disregard. And because they were immersed in their shared creative experience (an imaginary Egyptian temple) there was no place for external biases to gain traction. All that was evident were the unsullied nascent personalities of the kids and the spirited, silly interactions that inevitably ensued. And in that magical make-believe environment of ancient Egypt, they were allowed to flourish and grow.

In reading The Egypt Game, I am reminded that we all start out as equals—innocent, imaginative, and unblemished—and only develop our insidious unintentional biases under the external influence of our parents, mentors, tragic events, and media. And we find that it doesn’t matter whether the media influences are books and television, as in the 1960s, or the internet and YouTube of the 2020s. And it doesn’t matter if it’s dressing up as Egyptians or playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons, kids revel in the same creative imaginary worlds, protecting themselves for a little while from becoming grown-ups. And perhaps that is a good reason for us all to read a children’s book from time to time, even one written long ago, just to remember what we gave up in the process of growing up.

4.4/5 stars

This book was a amazing story that I could NOT put down. Even though it isn’t really about Egypt I absolutely loved it. It is an easy read, and as an eleven year old and a sixth grader this is a GREAT way to pass the time