Customer Reviews

Mummies, Pyramids, and Pharaohs: A Book About Ancient Egypt

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Gail Gibbons' Mummies, Pyramids, And Pharaohs is a children's picturebook that explores daily life and belief in the afterlife among the people of ancient Egypt. Aptly researched and presented in plain terms along with color illustrations stylistically reminiscent of ancient egyptian art, Mummies, Pyramids, And Pharaohs is as educational as it is enthralling. A highly recommended nonfiction book to whet young minds' curiosity about world history, Mummies, Pyramids, And Pharaohs would make a popular addition to any school or community library system collection.

"Mummies, Pyramids, and Pharaohs" is what writer-artist Gail Gibbons uses to get young readers to take a look at this book about Ancient Egypt, but she gets beyond the main attractions to provide a nice little introduction to this ancient civilization. The idea is for young readers to travel back in time to when one of the world's first civilizations began five thousand years ago along the banks of the Nile River. For three thousands of those years the pharaohs ruled over Egypt, and each was believed to be Horus, the son of Ra, the great sun god.

Gibbons looks at the "Black Land" of fertile soil around the Nile, the life of the Pharaohs, the organization of ancient Egyptian society, and families lived back then. Appearance mattered to people, farmers depended on water from the Nile, and craftspeople had plenty of gold and copper to work with to make beautiful objects. Sections are devoted to picture writing, medicinal healing (and magic), feasts and celebrations. Gibbons looks at the primary beliefs of Egyptian religion and the basic process of mummification (without going into detail on how the body's organs were removed, which is the icky part). This gets us to the pyramids, which remain the most obvious symbol of ancient Egypt we can see today, and young readers come full circle to the museums around the world where mummies and other artifacts are on exhibit.

The final page of the book looks at some Ancient Egypt Discoveries and covers a bunch of interesting facts, such as more than 80 pyramids have been discovered in Egypt and the priest in charge of making a mummy wore the mask of a jackal symbolizing Anubis the god of the dead. The illustrations for this book are done in watercolors and are certainly kid friendly, which should make them easy for young readers to imitate. The result is a nice introductory overview of life in ancient Egypt that tells young readers about the people, daily activities, beliefs and customs that we have learned about from the artifacts they left behind.

This book was great for my kids 8 and 6 . They enoyed it very much and like to read it often. It was especially helpful before seeing the King Tut exhibit.