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THE EGYPT GAME by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

THE EGYPT GAME

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder & illustrated by Alton Raible

Pub Date: March 21st, 1967
ISBN: 1416990518
Publisher: Atheneum

Offbeat kids, in dialogue, ingenious pretense and attendant complications—all the elements for ten, eleven-year-old enjoyment, and then a problem: a criminally insane killer of children. April, an insecure sophisticate, and Melanie, a sensible Negro girl of compatible imagination, transform a deserted back yard into the land of Egypt, and themselves into votaries of ancient rites. The Egypt Game is not only "a terrific game," but also "a life unknown to grown-ups and lived by kids alone." At its height, the wanton murder of a child occurs in the vicinity, and the adults refuse to let the children out to play. But. surveillance relaxes eventually, the ceremonies resume (with new recruits), and on a late night visit to the lot, April is attacked—something grabs her out of the darkness, fingers close on her mouth and throat. She is saved by the shouts of an elderly antique dealer who had been a suspect; the assailant is identified and sent to an institution. The danger to April and the subsequently revealed life story of the antique dealer motivate the solution of most of everybody's family problems, and Melanie and April (much humanized) plan further imaginative adventures. The heterogeneous composition of a university community in California contributes to the subtle (sometimes suspicious, ultimately enriching) relationships among the children, and their Egyptian absorption is all too real. But objections remain: the antique dealer is the stock suspect-turned-sympathetic-sage, and the demented killer is both tangential to the plot and a questionable component in a book for this age. As Melanie says, this is "the kind of thing parents tell their children when they're alone together." Because the episode is handled with restraint, We can only question, not condemn; the decision is yours.