The Egypt Game

October 12, 2023 Joseph D'Agnese

Back in 2015, I attended the Bouchercon mystery conference in Raleigh, and sat listening to a panel discussion in which a bunch of mystery writers recommended some of their favorite books. When her turn came, the New York Times Bestselling author Laura Lippman mentioned a children’s book entitled The Egypt Game, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I remember her saying it was an unusual book for kids, because its key subplot deals with the murder of a child.

You can check out the details of the book right here (affiliate link):

The Egypt Game

Published in 1967, the title was named a Newbery Honor book. That’s one of the top two awards a children’s book can receive. Clearly, it was highly regarded by many in its heyday, though I had never heard of it.

Now, you guys know that I recommend a ton of children’s books here. I grew up reading mysteries for kids, eventually moving on to adult mysteries. Later, I worked as an editor at Scholastic, arguably the world’s largest publisher of children’s reading materials. I’ve written children’s books as well.

At the SleuthSayers blog for mystery writers, I’ve sort of become the de facto children’s book reviewer. When I recommend a kid’s mystery, invariably I describe it as a murderless mystery. Because, I’ve always assumed, that’s what we all want mysteries for kids to be: safe, sanitized, as bloodless as possible.

But here was a book that broke a rule handed down from the earliest Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries: kids don’t get killed.

Yes, we know they do in real life. And when such things happen, they are perceived and condemned as abhorrent and tragic. But in the world of children’s literature, you don’t go there. You don’t dare terrify kids. Or if you do, you do it in more age-appropriate books, such as YA, or in the horror genre.

About a year ago, before things went horribly wrong, I finally snagged a copy of The Egypt Game, and read it one afternoon in a sports bar while my wife was watching a soccer game. (This is a frequent tradition in our family. She loves soccer; I love reading.) Later, I wrote about the book in a post for SleuthSayers entitled:

Reading in Soccer Bars: The Egypt Game

Despite the horror at the center of the book, I found it remarkably well written. Emotional, too, in all the right ways. A group of kids become obsessed with ancient Egypt and devise a series of imaginative games where they dress up as ancient Egyptians and act out imaginative scenarios in that world.

Later writers point out that Snyder’s plot foresaw the creation of role-playing games (RPGs for short) that would become so popular a decade or two later. Dungeons and Dragons is probably the best-known RPG, and the one my brother and his friends played when we were kids.

I urge you to check out this book if you write or are planning to write for kids. I think it’s a good example of what can be done, if you have the chutzpah and the right skill set. We live in such a different world, such a different publishing environment, these days. As I was reading, I frankly wondered if this book is still taught in schools.

What’s funny is, as I was reading it in the bar that day, I had two vastly different reactions from fellow patrons. I mention this in the SleuthSayers post, but I’ll summarize it here quickly.

One woman, a school teacher, told me that, yes, she used the used the book as a jumping-off point to teach social studies—i.e., the history of Egypt—but she herself hated the book. She found it boring. Not scary. Boring.

Another woman ran up out of the blue to tell me how much she loved the book as a kid.

Granted, everyone was drinking alcohol, but that’s two reactions in as little as an hour. That rarely happens when I’m reading in public places.

The one wacky coincidence that emerged from that soccer bar experience is that on the very same day that I was reading that book, my wife met a fellow soccer fan—a woman who loves soccer as much as she does—and they hit it off, became best friends, and later met up for road trip in Egypt (where the new friend lives and works)!