The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, 1967.
April Hall has come to live with her grandmother (the mother of her deceased father) because her actress mother is touring with a band as a singer. April’s mother isn’t a big star, although April likes to brag about her and their Hollywood life. Really, her mother is mostly a vocalist who occasionally gets parts as an extra, hoping for that big break. April is sure that when her mother gets back from her tour, she will send for her, and they will live together in Hollywood again. Although, from the way her grandmother behaves, it seems as though April may have to prepare herself for living with her for the long term. April resents her grandmother’s apparent belief that her mother has dumped her because she is unwilling or unable to take care of her.
April is homesick and misses her mother. To hide her feelings, she tries to act grown-up and ultra-sophisticated, which makes most people regard her as a little weird. In spite of that, she makes friends with a girl named Melanie, who lives in a nearby apartment and sees through April’s act to her insecurity and creative side. April has never had many friends (partly because of her mother’s chaotic lifestyle), but Melanie appreciates April’s imagination. The two girls realize that they both like playing games of pretend and they both have a fascination with Ancient Egypt. They go to the library and read everything they can find about Egypt, and it sparks the best game from pretend they’ve ever played. Along with a few other friends, they start pretending to be Ancient Egyptians, building their own Egyptian “temple” and holding rituals in the old junk yard behind a nearby antique shop.
On Halloween night, the adults try to keep the children together in groups for safety, but the “Egyptians” sneak off alone to conduct one of their “rituals.” It’s a dangerous thing to do because a child has been murdered in their area. A young girl who was apparently abducted was later found dead, and people are frightened that other children could be in danger. Fortunately, the only thing that happens on Halloween is that the Egyptians recruit a couple of new members when some boys from school find out what they’re doing.
However, the game starts taking on a life of its own when it seems that some other, unknown person has also joined in. As part of their game, the children make up a new ritual and write messages to their “oracle,” asking questions that they want answered. To their surprise, someone starts writing replies. Whoever is playing oracle and answering their questions, it doesn’t seem to be a child.
The children are uneasy about this unexpected game player because frightening things are happening in their neighborhood. The kids wonder if the mysterious messages could be from the crazed killer who murdered the young girl. People have been looking suspiciously at the loner who owns the antique store, an older man who everyone calls the Professor. However, the kids have become too enmeshed in the Egypt game to give it up in spite of their fears.
When April slips out one night to retrieve a text book she left in “Egypt,” she comes frighteningly close to being the killer’s next victim.
This is a Newbery Honor Book. It is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There is a sequel called The Gypsy Game.
My Reaction
Although there are mysteries in the story (who killed the girl and who the unknown player of the Egypt game is), the development of the characters, especially April, is really at the heart of the story. All through the story, what April wants most is for her mother to come for her and take her home again. April fears that her mother doesn’t love her or want her, and at first, that keeps her from even trying to love the grandmother who took her in and really wants her. However, she finds comfort when she realizes that she is creating a new life with her grandmother and friends, who really care about her. Her mother does write to her later about coming to stay for a brief visit with her and her new husband (her acting manager, who she married on short notice without even telling April or inviting her to come to their wedding), but by then, April has started to feel at home in her new home and wants to share Christmas with the people who have been sharing in her life and adventures more than her mother has. She never even tells her mother about her brush with death.
The characters in the book are diverse, representing different racial backgrounds, ages, and family situations. Melanie and her younger brother are African American. Melanie understands more about human nature and how the world works than April does, partly because her mother talks to her about people and explains things. Melanie realizes from the way that April behaves and how she doesn’t understand certain things, like the fact that there disturbed, dangerous people in the world, that her mother never really talked to her much or explained things when they were living together. Melanie helps to ground April’s more flighty, insecure personality. She joins in her imagination games eagerly, but she also helps to bring April more into sync with reality and other people.
The first new player they add to the game, Elizabeth, is Asian and lives with her widowed mother and other siblings. Like April, she is a little lonely and looking for new friends in her new home. Each of the kids, like April, have their own inner lives and personalities. The Egypt game binds them together and provides them with friendship and insights into their lives.
It’s 1851, and Professor Carver of Boston is living in an apartment above a candle shop with his wife and two children, his son Jamie and daughter Lorna. One day, a man named Mr. Giddings comes to see Professor Carver to request his help. For years, he has wanted to buy a particular farm with a beautiful house called Windy Hill. However, when he finally succeeded in buying the house and he and his wife went to live there, his wife became very upset. She said that she felt strange in the house and that she had seen a ghost. Now, she is too upset to return to Windy Hill. Mr. Giddings has heard that Professor Carver once helped a friend get rid of a ghost haunting his house, and he asks the professor if he would be willing to do the same for him.
Jamie and Lorna are thrilled by the house, which is much bigger than their apartment in town. They can each have their own room, and there is an old tower in the house that was built by a former owner, who was always paranoid about Indian (Native American) attacks (something which had never actually happened). However, their new neighbors are kind of strange. Stover, the handyman, warns them that the house is haunted and also tells them about another neighbor, Miss Miggie. Miss Miggie is an old woman who wanders around, all dressed in white, and likes to spy on people. There is also a boy named Bruno, who apparently can’t walk and often begs at the side of the road with his pet goat, and his father, Tench, who is often drunk and doesn’t want people to make friends with Bruno.
Then, strange things do start happening in the house. The quilt that Lorna has been making disappears and reappears in another room in the middle of the night. At first, the family thinks maybe she was walking in her sleep because she had done it before, when she was younger. However, there is someone who has been entering the house without the Carvers’ knowledge, and Jamie and Lorna set a trap that catches the mysterious “ghost.”
Jilly was sick on her birthday and couldn’t have a party, so she and Peanut decide to hold an haunted house party, just for fun and invite all the kids in their class. The girls’ nemesis, Jennifer, and her friends are in another class and won’t be invited to the party, but when they hear about it, they make it a point to tell Peanut and Jilly how childish it sounds. However, no one else seems to think so, and the girls’ classmates are eager to come.
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, 1971.
With their family suddenly much larger, David’s father bought a new house for them to live in. Actually, it’s a very old house just outside of a small town. People call it the Westerly house after the former owners. Not long after the family moves in, they find out that people used to say that the Westerly house was haunted. Mr. and Mrs. Westerly used to travel around the world with their two daughters because Mr. Westerly worked for the government, but after they settled down to a quieter life in this small town in the late 1800s, strange things started happening in their house. Rocks would fly around the house, seemingly thrown by invisible hands, and someone (or something) cut the head off the carved cupid on the fancy staircase banister. The head was never found. These incidents were reported in the local paper, and people believed that the Westerly family was haunted by a 
Amanda is fascinated by stories of the poltergeist. A friend of hers where she used to live (one her mother didn’t approve of) was teaching her about the occult and how to do magic spells. When David tells Amanda that he thought that his mother was psychic, Amanda is surprised, and she offers to teach David and the other kids about magic over the summer. David eagerly accepts the offer because he finds the subject fascinating and because it’s the only thing that Amanda really seems interested in. The other kids are also fascinated at the idea, even the littlest ones, which takes Amanda by surprise. She had expected them to be scared.
Just as with the Westerly family years ago, rocks are thrown around the house or found just laying around. Things are broken in the middle of the night. Have Amanda’s rituals somehow awoken the poltergeist once more? David has his doubts, suspecting that it’s part of Amanda’s playacting, but she is accounted for when some of these strange things happen. The younger kids are still more fascinated than frightened by these strange happenings, but their stepmother finds them particularly unnerving.
There are some elements of the happenings, particularly the reappearance of the cupid’s head, that are never fully explained, although David ends up knowing more than Amanda by the end. Some aspects of the situation are hinted at. There may be a real supernatural event at the end of the story. Blair appears to have inherited psychic abilities from his mother, and there is a distinct possibility that the Westerly sisters who once lived in the house were just as unhappy with their parents for the changes in their lives as Amanda was with her mother. Although the “poltergeist” as it first appears doesn’t exist, it may be that the “poltergeist” of the past remembers what it was like to be young and unhappy and that she wanted to make amends for past wrongs and to help another troubled young girl to make peace with her life and family. But, if you don’t like that explanation, there is a more conventional, non-supernatural explanation that David considers, which equally possible. Personally, I think it’s a combination of the two, but it’s not completely clear. I think the author left it open-ended like that to make readers wonder and to preserve the air of mystery after the other mysteries have been cleared up.
Midnight Magic by Avi, 1999.
Journeyman Wizard by Mary Frances Zambreno, 1994.
A Plague of Sorcerers by Mary Frances Zambreno, 1991.
Basil in the Wild West by Eve Titus, 1990.
Although J.J. escapes, Basil and Dr. Dawson decide that the smuggling ring has been defeated and it’s alright to continue their sight-seeing. However, their adventures are not over!
Basil and the Pygmy Cats by Eve Titus, 1971.
Now, Basil thinks that he and his associates are free to continue their other mission, finding the lost civilization of pygmy cats. However, that mission is fraught with danger and surprises, and they haven’t quite heard the last of Ratigan.
Basil and the Lost Colony by Eve Titus, 1964.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 