ANCIENT EGYPT

Strachan’s photographed dioramas—elaborately staged tableaux of clay and wood combined with oil paint—are undermined by a weak text and painfully inadequate coverage of a subject that deserves better treatment. Facts about Egypt range from cogent information on mummification to a confusing paragraph about The Book of the Dead. Text is largely present tense, an unfortunate choice that consigns it to little more than captions for the art. The dioramas, in attempting a you-are-there verisimilitude, employ garish studio lighting, intentionally unfocused backgrounds and plenty of sandy soil. The flesh of the stolid, sculpted figures has a shiny solidity that undercuts the realism, and metallic elements sometimes look like tin foil or gilt paper. A resource page lists three children’s books and two websites, and a table of contents offers the only other structural aid. This ambitious but flawed effort is strictly for browsing. (Informational picture book. 5-8)