The Egypt Game
The Egypt Game (1967) is a Newbery Honor award winning novel by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. The story, set in California, follows the creation of a sustained imaginative game by a group of children who share an interest in Ancient Egypt. Their bright imaginations inspire the game, but strange, dangerous things happen in their neighborhood.
[edit] Plot summary
April Hall, the young daughter of a growing actress-singer, is sent to live with her grandmother Caroline in a large university town in California. She was sent there by her mother, Dorothea, because Dorothea was too busy with her career. April makes friends with Melanie Ross, a classmate who shares her fascination with reading and imagination. Melanie lives in the Casa Rosada, a Spanish looking apartment building where Caroline also lives. In August, the girls, along with Melanie's four year old brother, Marshall and his stuffed octopus, Security, go to the library where "the seeds were planted that grew into the Egypt game." The game began in September in the storage yard of A-Z Antiques (Curious, Used Merchandise). The children enter through a loose board in the fence. The owner of the store "The Professor", is a mysterious man of whom the neighborhood children are afraid. April, Melanie, and Marshall research actual Egyptian belief systems and practices, and they create their own rituals intended to reproduce them more or less authentically. They are joined by Elizabeth, a nine year old girl who moves into the Case Rosada with her mother and two younger sisters. Then all of a sudden they hear that there has been a murder in the neighborhood, which results in them being restricted from playing outside for a few months. Ken and Toby, two popular boys, join into the game, and they are more or less excited to do so. When they do return to Egypt after Halloween, they devise an oracle, connected to Thoth (an Egyptian god), and are unnerved by some of its answers. A lot of mysterious things happen after that.
(Spoiler Alert!) When the murderer's identity is discovered by April and Marshall, after a horrific incident, the "Professor" reveals that he has been watching the children's game the whole time. As a Christmas gift, he gives a key to each of the six children to access the recently locked storage yard.
Although the children feel that the Egypt Game cannot continue because its essential property of secrecy (or at least their perception of its secrecy) has been destroyed, so they discuss no longer playing. The book ends with one of the children raising the possibility of a new game involving Gypsies. Snyder followed up on this possibility by writing The Gypsy Game in 1997.
