By Roberta Edwards
Tutankhamun's whole life in one short biography: the boy who became pharaoh, died around eighteen, and lay hidden in his tomb for three thousand years until someone dug him up, gold and all.
Tutankhamun was crowned pharaoh as a young boy and ruled only a few years before he died, around eighteen. Egypt more or less forgot him, which turned out to be lucky: tomb robbers skipped his grave, so when Howard Carter found it in 1922 it was still packed with gold. Roberta Edwards walks through his short life, how his body was mummified and buried, the day Carter broke in, the famous golden mask, and the "curse of the pharaohs" story people told afterward. It's part of the Who Was? series, so you get big type, cartoon drawings, and short chapters. It reads like a chapter book, but all of it happened.
If your child is stuck on King Tut, this is the book that tells his whole story at a reading level they can handle on their own: the short life, the death, the tomb full of treasure. And because Who Was? runs to hundreds of titles, a child who finishes this one hungry for more true stories has an easy next thing to grab.