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    The Egypt Game
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    The Egypt Game
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    The Egypt Game
    Ebook187 pages2 hours

    The Egypt Game

    By Zilpha Keatley Snyder

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The first time Melanie Ross meets April Hall, she’s not sure they have anything in common. But she soon discovers that they both love anything to do with ancient Egypt. When they stumble upon a deserted storage yard, Melanie and April decide it’s the perfect spot for the Egypt Game. Before long there are six Egyptians, and they all meet to wear costumes, hold ceremonies, and work on their secret code. Everyone thinks it’s just a game until strange things start happening. Has the Egypt Game gone too far?

    Editor's Note

    Beloved Children’s Author...

    Beloved author Zilpha Keatley Snyder was known for her imaginative and charming children’s mysteries. This Newbery Award-winning classic is emblematic of that style: a funny, suspenseful, and captivating tale of friendship, and the power of imagination.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtheneum Books for Young Readers
    Release dateOct 23, 2012
    ISBN9781439132029
    Author

    Zilpha Keatley Snyder

    Zilpha Keatley Snyder is the author of The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid, and The Witches of Worm, all Newbery Honor Books. Her most recent books include The Treasures of Weatherby, The Bronze Pen, William S. and the Great Escape, and William’s Midsummer Dreams. She lives in Mill Valley, California. Visit her at ZKSnyder.com.

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    Reviews for The Egypt Game

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      April comes to live with her dead father's mother, Caroline. April's mother, Dorothea, lived in Hollywood and was an aspiring actress with a boyfriend and not much time for an 11 year old child. April is somewhat of a fish out of water until she meets Melanie, a girl her age who lives in the same apartment complex. Between the two girls the Egypt game begins and they gather things to play it in the lot next to the A-Z junk shop run by a mysterious old man called the Professor. Wherever Melanie goes she must take her four year old brother, Marshall. What I found terribly interesting was not only how these three, then four, then five children make up and played such a fascinating game given just their own imaginations and the things that came to hand, but also how the author wove into the story the very serious and politically loaded subject of the murder of a child. Just so you don't put the book down and not pick it up after that statement, none of the main characters in the story are the child that dies, but the murderer is a person who lives in the neighborhood. The author handles this very loaded subject very adroitly without losing the charm and humor of the main story...nice. It is well worth reading
    • 5/5
      We read this book in school, but I also loved all of Zilpha Keatley-Snyder's work, esp the Great Stanley Kidnapping Case. A few years ago I heard her speak at my public library, and she was just wonderful, very warm and funny.
    • 4/5
      I've been drawn to this author for a while - her stories are classics in the children book aisle, and her plots intrigue me. This year, I finally read two of her stories. The first was a strip book I've been sitting on since I worked in the book store years ago: The Runaways, a more serious realistic fiction depicting the lives of three young children living in a small desert town who are unhappy with their situations. She incorporated humor and dealt with a lot of heavy emotions using a light touch that rendered them accessible to children, and the writing was finely crafted. However, I was more excited to read her stories that incorporated a little supernatural suspense, as many of her Newbery awards and honors do, so I was excited to start this book, The Egypt Game.The book follows the adventure of two girls, April and Melanie, who create the Egypt game. At first glance, they appear as opposite as can be: Melanie is an outgoing and amiable girl, good at getting along with everyone, and April distances herself from others with her arrogant airs and outrageous stories. Melanie has had a typical childhood, with two caring parents and a younger brother, settled in a neighborhood where she has lived her whole life. April, on the other hand, lived in California with her aspiring-actress mother, who was so focused on her own career and her desires that she often neglected her parenting and treated April more like a sister than a daughter. Despite their differences, they quickly learn that they have one important characteristic in common - they both prefer playing creative games made up in their mind than outdoor games or board games or school games. Bound by this shared interest, they become fast friends. One day, as they discuss their fascination with Ancient Egypt and old artifacts, they decide to reenact a ceremony from that culture, and the Egypt game is born. As time passes, the game evolves, with more roles for the girls to play, fake gods and goddesses borrowed from Egypt's religions, and lots of ceremonies and secret languages to create and enact. They incorporate Marshall, Melanie's younger brother, into the games from the start, so he can play a child Pharaoh. Later, they invite a new friend, Elizabeth, who moves into their apartment complex, and then two boys from school who find their secret hideout where all the Egypt games take place.The Egypt game becomes more important for the children as the real world around them darkens. A young girl is murdered, in the same fashion as a child was murdered not long ago in the past, and the town knows that they have a serial killer of children on their hands. Children are kept indoors and the streets are silenced. Melanie and April focus on the game instead of the new rules and restrictions, but even in the game, events are turning strange as the pretend oracle starts to accurately predict the future, building up to a climax that resolves all the mysteries of the book. As with the first book I read by Snyder, the author deftly handles mature topics, such as the fear engendered by violence, with just the right balance of enough information and not too much. Children need to learn about matters both serious and light, and it is important to address them in a way appropriate for their age. I think Snyder is a master at maintaining this fine balance. She writes children's stories with integrity and finesse.In addition, her characters are fully realized girls and boys that embody child-like thoughts, actions, and desires. They are complex characters who evolve as the story progresses. I loved every kid in this book, and wished I could be friends with them when I was a child. The plot builds up naturally and reads quickly. It's a clever story about inventive children - and the Egypt game is a fascinating concept that they create - that will appeal to children and adults.
    • 4/5
      When April moves in with her grandmother, she meets Melanie and Marshall Ross. April and Melanie become fast friends, discovering a shared delight in reading and imaginative games, and both become fascinated with Ancient Egypt. In a neighbor's abandoned yard, they begin playing the Egypt Game, using their knowledge of Ancient Egypt and imagination to create altars and rituals in an elaborate game. But their play is threatened when a local child is murdered, and there's a possibility that the guilty person is someone they know.I chose this as my read for Banned Books Week, curious to see what sorts of rituals and descriptions might make someone react so strongly as to challenge this book just in the past year. I'd expected a fantasy where the gods came to life, and ancient rituals were described in detail. I'm still somewhat baffled, because what I found was a book steeped in imaginative play that reminded me of the games I used to play with my friends, cousins, and neighbors. In fact, reading the book became more of an experience of walking down memory lane, remembering how we played games based on movies or TV shows that we would stop to discuss who was getting eaten by dinosaurs, or if which dinosaur we were calling on for super powers. The descriptions of the kids' imagination, discussions, and power plays for making game decisions, were quite realistic. I was also surprised that a book written in the 60s has aged extremely well. Though I laughed at some of the kids' expressions ("Sheesh!" reminded me of another friend from my childhood...), for the most part their story could have been one that happened in almost any small town neighborhood. Also, the main characters are white, African American, Asian American, and more, quite a varied cast for its time. I seriously wonder what book the challenger was reading, because it doesn't appear to be at all like the one I read.
    • 5/5
      "The Egypt Game" is easily Zilpha Keatley Snyder's most famous work, and there's little mistaking why: it's a fantastic story and expertly written. The book represents the zenith of a number of themes and ideas Snyder has worked with across almost five decades of a career, along with the introduction of a multiculturalism apparent in many of her later stories. This one has probably found its way into school curricula for that reason and two others - the "educational" nature of the children's game, and the rare introduction of a truly dark, dangerous undercurrent in the form of a child's murder - but that doesn't stop it being an extraordinary book on its own merits.This is the book that, more than any other, really quickly demonstrates Snyder's adept skill at understanding the language and methodology of children. You have several very distinct character types - the lonely girl with the selfish front, the practical and considerate girl, the quiet and kind girl, the older-than-his-years toddler, the big jocks - working through problems together, whether those be real or totally imaginary. Snyder never talks down to us as readers (as usual, her lack of need for an overt narrative voice is remarkable), nor does she attempt to tell us how children should behave. She simply reports what they would do, quite naturally, and finds characteristic reasons to encourage or discourage certain behavior. At one point during their Egyptian rituals, one child suggests signing their names in blood, as she had read in "Tom Sawyer." The children abandon the idea not because such an idea might be dangerous or unwise, but because they haven't got a sharp needle to hand - and besides, one of the children feels a bit squeamish over the idea. It's simple, but it indicates an authenticity of audience that Snyder can pull off like few others. She may have been a teacher, but there's nothing of the preachy "teacher" voice in Snyder's work. Of course, more than anything, "The Egypt Game" is simply a great read. I loved it at eight or nine years old and was astonished how well it holds up after all these years. Several times I laughed out loud in the reading (as with Toby's Halloween costume), and more than once I found myself saying, "She managed to do *that* in a children's book?" This is a really wonderful work and deserves to be enjoyed by many more generations of readers, both young and old.
    • 5/5
      I picked this up again on a recent trawl through the children's books at my local library. I was looking for something else and got engrossed and suddenly remembered this book. I loved this book when I was a kid. I read it many times because it so captured the kind of kid I was - one whose play depended on books and imagination. I just wish I could have found friends as cool as the ones in this book.Re-reading this as an adult I remember all the reasons I loved it. It's smart and doesn't assume that kids are idiots. It deals with serious themes, but doesn't pound you over the head with them nor does it trivialize them - they are part of the world we all live in.There are so many subtleties in this book - the relationship between April and her Grandmother, the latchkey kid phenomena, the loneliness of the shopkeeper who watches the kids play through his window, the frightening events in the neighborhood. All of these bits of the story are interwoven with the day-to-day lives of the children and their playing at being Egyptian. This book is also effortlessly multicultural and that's pretty wonderful, too.It was so great to revisit this old friend and nice to see how much I still love it after all these years. If you have a kid with imagination this is a wonderful read (good for adults with imagination, too)!
    • 3/5
      Welcome to ancient Egypt, a secret, mystical, magical place where good and evil battle for the lives of the princes/priests/priestesses every day after school. This secret Egypt happens to be in the storage yard of an antique shop. April, Melanie and Marshall create an elaborate game that is as limitless as their imagination (and a few borrowed props). And when their land is invaded by Ken and Toby, they have no choice but to let the invaders in on the magic of the Egypt Game.But not all is fun and games, and the children soon realize that in the world outside, danger lurks and threatens to destroy what they have built.I really enjoyed reading the creative things these kids think of to add to their game, and it definitely is a realistic portrayal of children playing. It was a good read, but it is probably not one that I would read over and over.
    • 5/5
      April has a movie star for a mom. When she has to move to a small city with her grandma she is really upset. She makes a friend named Melanie. They only have one thing in common, they love ancient Egypt. They make a game called the Egypt game but mysterious things start to happen. What will happen in the Egypt game? I liked this book because of all the humor and mystery. I actually enjoyed reading some of the words they used. The characters were also very funny. I recommend this book to people who like ancient Egypt and humor in writing.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Some schoolchildren come upon an empty lot behind a thrift shop where they find an old bust of Nefertiti. This sparks their imagination and they begin pretending they are priests and priestesses of ancient Egypt. There's some mild drama here and there, but mostly it's just about kids playing make believe. It's something I would have liked as a kid, but as an adult it was all nostalgia. My friends and I were obsessed with playing make-believe. We were known to dress up in costumes and pretend to be Greek gods and goddesses, or invent convoluted stories acted out on the playground during recess. I have no idea if a modern kid would like this book, but my inner child sure did.
    • 4/5
      Newberry Medal 1968, What a great to get sixth-grade students to connect with the characters. There are twists and suspense in every turn of the page.
    • 3/5
      I'm not sure if this would appeal to any children. It begins with a full chapter description of a 2nd hand shop & its owner. Snyder carefully includes a racial mix in the main characters.April has been dumped at her grandmother's while her mother is on tour (tho adult readers may feel free to interpret that as "having an affair"). A neighbor girl is compatibly imaginative, they find an abandoned lot & start creating role-playing with Egyptian gods, which is developed over several months. Neighborhood boys barge in, but become intrigued by the role-playing & join. There have been a couple of unsolved deaths of children in town, and the children are inadvertently involved in solving the mystery, as well as giving a new outlook on life to a mourning elderly widow.
    • 4/5
      This is another Newberry Honor book that my son and I are reading together. I enjoyed it and thought it was a fun story. It starts out with two girls and their little 4 year old brother that love "Egyptology" so they create their own imaginative game to play in secret. As they bring new kids with new ideas, into their club including even a couple of boys, The Egypt Game evolves and takes on a life of its own.

      The book highlights that its ok for kids of different races to intermix; that boys and girls can also learn and have fun together at the same time without being ridiculed; and that you shouldn't judge people that you don't know, based on rumors, hearsay, looks etc.

      My son hasn't finished reading yet so I don't have his thoughts on the book yet but I'll update later...
    • 3/5
      Meleanie and April play The Egypt Game with a few friends, but then it gets out of hand.
    • 3/5
      Fantastic read with children at bedtime. I love to share Newbery Awards and Honors book with my girls that way. The Gypsy Game is now on our list to read.
    • 2/5
      So I'm pulling this off of my classroom shelf; 6th grade is definitely as old as one should be to enjoy this one. I had really loved this in 5th grade, as far as I could remember, and I inherited this copy from another teacher in my classroom. After my 5th-grade boy loved Riordan's The Red Pyramid, I thought (but am now smacking myself in the forehead) that he may enjoy reading this with me.

      We're absolutely spoiled. The short, suspenseful, action-packed chapters in a year's worth of Riordan adventures has made everything else boring, perhaps. I hate to admit this, but I kept feeling like NOTHING WAS HAPPENING in this book! NOTHING! We persevered, thinking that surely something will happen soon, and the book IS, after all, OKAY..... Yeah, it's cool how the girls play...but that's about it. Yes, in hindsight, things did happen in this book. A lot, actually. If one were to write a synopsis of the plot, it seems like it would be much more entertaining than it is. I'm undecided as to whether the problem was the writing or pacing in the book, the fact that I'm an adult now, the fact that my son is so definitely not the 5th grade girl that I was, or if the problem was simply that we're accustomed to high-paced, shallow, unrealistic action sequences. He recently read both Freak and Max the Mighty, which are also realistic fiction, and he loved that. So I can't explain why this was such a drag. I'd love to hear the reaction of a girl currently in the fifth grade; does this book still have magic?

    • 4/5
      I was expecting this book to be a fantasy of some kind--either straightforward or magical realism. I was actually kind of gratified to see that everything had a logical explanation and that it could easily have actually taken place back in 1968. I do want to acknowledge that parents are way more likely to know where their kids are now and unlikely to let them wander the streets alone, but this is why I tagged it historical fiction. Marking it historical fiction definitely killed me a little bit since the 60s don't seem all that long ago but the attitudes and behaviors are so different then what would happen today that I wanted to acknowledge it could only happen in the past. The kids are really interesting and I loved reading about the crazy ceremonies they came up with. I definitely plan on reading the next one in the series.

    • 4/5
      A few years ago I undertook to read Zilpha Keatley Snyder's entire body of work, motivated in part by the fact that although she is an extraordinarily talented and prolific author, I had only read two of her books as a child. One of these was The Changeling, a book that has relentlessly haunted me from the time I first read it. This was the other.Snyder's fourth book - which won a Newbery Honor - follows the story of two young girls, April and Melanie, whose unlikely friendship leads to the revelation that they are both fascinated by ancient Egypt, and to the creation of "the Egypt Game." Soon they are joined by other children, and the game begins to take on a life of its own. When eerie things begin to happen, the friends find themselves wondering if it is a game at all...I can remember racing through this novel as a child, completely ensnared by Snyder's suspenseful plot; hoping, in fact, for a more supernatural explanation than the one eventually given. I could not have articulated then just why this book (and The Changeling) exercised such a powerful effect upon me. Reading as an adult however, I recognize Snyder's keen understanding of the role of the imagination in the lives of children - the games they create, the "daydreams" that give meaning to their lives. She understands the power of the child's inner life, and is never condescending towards "childish" things. I think I must also have found it refreshing to read a story with such a matter-of-fact interracial friendship, in which race itself was not the predominant concern.Like many of Snyder's early novels, The Egypt Game is illustrated by Alton Raible.
    • 5/5
      When April moves in with her grandmother, she expects it will be quite boring - she is afterall, the daughter of a movie star. Soon though, April and her neighbor Melanie are spending most afternoons in a vacant lot playing "Egypt" - they have costumes, names, rituals, and have even involved Melanie's little brother Marshall as the prince of Egypt. Soon their game must stop because a child in the neighborhood has died...can the girls safely go back to Egypt or are they closer to the kidnapper there? I LOVED the imagination in this book - I got very caught up in their rituals and stories and started to wonder if the book was partially fantasy and the girls actually got some of it to work. So clever, but a little scary with the death of a neighborhood child (at the hands of another neighbor).
    • 5/5
      When Melanie meets April, she sees past her Hollywood cool to April's amazing imagination right away. April finds in Melanie the first real same age friend she's ever had- which almost makes up for the fact that her mother shipped her off to live with her grandmother. She and Melanie, along with Melanie's younger brother, create the land of Egypt out of an abandoned lot. They are joined by three more kids who furthur embellish on their stories. Two mysteries begin to happen- one is that there is a man attacking children in the neighborhood, and the other is that their oracle seems to be working. When April has to come late at night to retrieve her books, she encounters both the man and the source of the working oracle. The professor who owns the lot, it turns out, has been watching them, and he calls for help when she is attacked. In the end the children bring him back to a life, which he only half been living since the death of his wife.
    • 4/5
      As a child like the characters in this book I was fascinated by Egypt, reading everything I could, making up my own hieroglyph name. There is the death of a child that happens off page of someone we don't know. I saw pretty much where the story was going. However it made me nostalgic for my childhood Egypt phase.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful story for middle grades and advanced younger readers. Superbly written with an authentic voice that reflects the children's perspective. In the narrative, a great deal of imagination on the part of the characters translates into an elaborate game, secret from the adults. The plot is a nifty, natural-teaching moment which engaged readers might find very inspiring for their own purposes.In re-reading this novel (with a 20+ year gap), I was struck by a particularly adult realization: the story never dips into a conversation about the dangers of playing secretively or admonishing the kids about sneaking out at night. I think that's because Snyder wrote the story in 1967, so it's very much a narrative of 'back in the day'. Kids are still loving this tale so I was delighted to find a reprinted copy.
    • 2/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatly Snyder [possibly one of the most unique authorial names I've come upon in my readings...seriously...Zilpha? Cool!] tells the story of April and Melanie the summer April is sent to live with her grandmother for a while. April's mother is a would-be starlet who decides that it would be best to have April in a stable environment while she builds up her resume--or at least that is what April would have you believe. She is a smart eleven-year-old who can handle grownups with little effort but has issues relating to peers. Melanie, a down-to-earth resident in the same apartment building, is sent to invite her for lunch, and she is unimpressed by the 'Hollywood act' and through just trying to give her a chance, they become fast friends when they discover their shared love of the imagination. It starts with paper families and stories they make up, and progresses through a love of reading into the realm of Egypt. When they find themselves a whole new world in the disused side-yard of a local junk shop, April and Melanie, along with Marshall, Melanie's little brother, and Security, his stuffed octopus, they set about creating their own version of the country. Their strange utopia is threatened, however, when a child in the neighborhood is found, dead, not far away. The girls must survive school, being trapped indoors and the paranoia of their parents while trying to find a way to maintain their country that is further threatened by the perpetual possibility of discovery. Almost an oddity when compared to the jet-propelled childhood of computers and TV, this adventure exists in the pre-internet days. The girls are forced to entertain themselves with books, often non-fiction, and they manage to make the best of it. It is a quiet adventure with little shouting and no explosions, but plenty of humour and a good dose of tension and mystery. I find it amazing when I think about how entangled I feel in the realm of technology and look back even on the days I spent tramping through the woods behind my house to the walking logs and praying that the local skunk population still hadn't discovered the veritable condo park of their hollow bases. Now I know kids who are better on the computer than I could ever hope to be without training. Ah well, this ramble has little point. The Egypt Game: it's a fun story. I'd recommend it more for girls than boys, as the protagonists are in fact girls, though boys do play a role part way through. It feels a bit young for eleven-year-olds, but that may be through the basic vocabulary. I dunno, that would be a more personal preference. 
    • 5/5
      I found this book to be hard to get into this time reading it, even though when I read it as a child it felt like a powerful vaccuum sucking me in. I realized by reading this book, that we as adults will have different experiences when we re-read a story we read as a child, but didn't remember the story only the experience of how realistic and lively the story used to be for us. In this way, re-reading this story now helped me connect with what made this book appealing to me as a young reader. I would say the reason I especially liked it was the creative resourceful praxis of the 'game' the characters came up with. As I was growing up, I found myself constantly inventing games that didn't involve going to the store and buying anything. But games similar to the 'Egypt' game, where there were a lot of different players and 'spoken' and 'unspoken' rules, that's why this book is so fun to read for me this time around maybe not first start reading, but the best part for me this time reading the book was after the children invented the Oracle. I remember doing similar things as a child, and it's really a book that encourages the absence from buying into grown up rules and conventions, but making up your own. I liked this book for that reason, more so than the writing style or even the way it was told. It's my opinion that this is why books like this that draw on what activates a young child's imagination are the overall consise appeal in youth. Though, I would say maybe they are less so as popular than when I was a child. I remember when I was growing up and read this book, it spurred for the invention of an elaborate game called 'spies' which was inspired from April and Melanie's original Egypt. In my 'spies' game I had recruits and different spies were different colors, signifying their levels-- it was an interesting game and all was a spin off of reading this book.  That's why I believe books around these kind of imaginative topics are not only quintessential to the development of who is a leader and who is a follower as youths develop, but it also allows for the collaboration of ideas.
    • 4/5
      This incredible book is about six enthusiastic kids who really enjoy reading anything and everything related to Egypt. It starts off with two main characters named Melanie and April. They first meet when April moves into an apartment building. They then become best friends after they discover they both like Egypt. Second, they start meeting together after school behind a very old antique shop to play a game they created that they call, the “Egypt game”.Melanie’s little brother, Marshall, picks a card that gives him the title of the Pharaoh. Then, whose name is Elizabeth convinces Melanie and April. On Halloween night, the groups of young Egyptologists walk together behind the antique shop to play instead of going Trick-Or-Treating. While they are in the middle of a pretend Egyptian ceremony, the 2 meanest bullies named Toby and Ken discover them and threaten to reveal the girl’s secret game and where they play it to the teachers. Then, Melanie and April propose to Ken and Toby to join in exchange for keeping the secret. This immediately sparks Ken’s interest because he loves Egypt, and he also convinces Toby to agree. There is a professor who works at an antique store. On Christmas Eve, they play the Egypt game behind his store. All the players first meet at April’s house. The professor tells a story about how he has been watching them play over the past year and how he helped Marshall’s stuffed octopus, Security, by leaving him in a dry place when Marshall left it in the backyard a rainy nightI like this book because it is about creative kids using what they like and make making it real. I think that they are very opened minded and very inventive.My favorite character is Marshall because of his sensitive mind. He was concerned and worried about Security when he lost Security behind the shop on the rainy day. Marshall is very disappointed and imagines that Security is going to get wet, get ruined, get sick or even get lost. Even though Security is just a stuffed toy, Marshall is very attached to the toy.I would rate this book 8 out of 10.
    • 4/5
      A young girl, April, moves into a new neighborhood after her actress mother decides to leave her with her grandmother. April finds a kindred spirit in her neighbor Melanie when they realize they are both fascinated by Egyptian culture. They create a game based on their interest and soon other kids join in the fun. All the while a local tragedy has everyone on edge. I think I probably would have loved this one as a kid. Unfortunately I just read it for the first time. I still enjoyed it, but the fantastical elements of creating a world from your imagination wasn’t quite as powerful as an adult. I loved that this story encourages kids to use their imaginations instead of relying only on TV and set games for entertainment. Embracing a different culture and learning about their traditions is a great lesson as well. BOTTOM LINE: A good kids' chapter book with a few scary parts. A great focus on using your imagination.  
    • 5/5
      Pure brilliance. This book is a must read for absolutely everyone. I have read it again and again without ever getting tired of it.