Book Review: The Scarab's Secret

In history, we are in Ancient Egypt.  There are so many great books for kids on Egypt, I can't even begin to look at them all at the library even.  I decided to choose a few we had read with Zach when he was kinder/1st grade, incorporate those for Lily and Noah, and add a few new ones to liven it up.  This one was a great recommendation in one of our guides. 

This is a folktale-style story of the little scarab beetle, Khepri, and his adventure with the pharaoh, saving him from death at the hands of two villains in the tale.  Yep, that is the tale, and it is simple.  That is not really what is great about this book, of course, though we all appreciate that an insignificant little critter saves the life of a mighty pharaoh, thus telling our kids that everyone can do great things!  The illustrations in this one are awesome, colorful, detailed, reminding one of fresco paintings.  The pictures detailing the interior of the buildings showed heiroglyphs, my kids of course finding the representations of ones they knew, ones we had been studying. 

The pacing of and length of this tale, combined of course with the great illustrations, made this a perfect read-aloud for us.  I actually used this one in co-op, so I had a group of 10 kids from pre-K to 6th grade.  All of them enjoyed it immensely, saying a lot about the appeal, right?  Highly recommend this one for just fun or to incorporate in your Egypt history studies.