Magical Museum: Ancient Egypt

MAGICAL MUSEUM: ANCIENT EGYPT is an illustrated nonfiction book that takes the reader through what we know about Ancient Egypt. There is a light plot throughout of the things in the museum coming to life due to the magical golden scarab, which must be caught to put things right. A mummified cat helps the reader to chase it through the pages.

What I loved: This is a pretty thorough and informative read, targeted at middle to older elementary school aged readers. The level of information and phrasing works well for this age. While the majority of the book focuses on what is known about mummies, pyramids, and related rituals, the book also includes information about what we know about the language/hieroglyphs, games people played, and how they structured their towns/societies. This was really interesting information, and the accompanying illustrations helped to bring it all to life visually for the reader.

Final verdict: With a conversational tone and wide breadth of information, MAGICAL MUSEUM: ANCIENT EGYPT takes the reader on quite the ride through what we know about Ancient Egypt in an approachable and colorful way.

Opening this book awakens a sacred scarab and unleashes him on a museum of ancient Egypt. Never fear, for a mummified cat has also come to life, and promises to help the reader catch the scarab, encountering a lot of information about this fascinating ancient culture in the meantime. This starts with an explanation of the mummification process, which is kept brief and factual, although it does discuss the fact that people's internal organs were taken out and stored in canopic jars. Older elementary students will love the details, but it might be a bit much for younger ones. There's a nice array of mummies shown, with brief information about their dates and roles. Sarcophagi and tombs are also covered, and I even learned a few things, like the fact that before pyramids, people were laid to rest in smaller tombs called mastabas. I've studied the ancient world quite a bit, so if I learn something from a book, it's got to be packed with information!

I was expecting that this book would just talk about the pyramid and the mummy, but we also get to follow the scarab and cat into the museum cinema, and get quite a complete look at life in Egpyt as well! It discusses they ways that both the wealthy and the not so wealthy went about their days, and even has a brief discussion on the rights and roles of women. Furniture, art, food, fun and games, and clothing and makeup all are covered; it's not enough information for a school project on one of the smaller aspects of culture, but certainly has enough for a general report! I liked that there was both a table of contents as well as an index at the end of the book.