By David Stewart
It walks you through ancient Egyptian mummification as if you're the one on the embalming table, all in cartoons and gross-out jokes.
You have just died in ancient Egypt, and the book takes it from there, cheerfully narrating everything the embalmers are about to do to your body. Cartoon characters chime in with speech bubbles and little 'Handy Hint' boxes while your organs come out, your brain gets pulled through your nose, and you spend seventy days drying under natron salt before the wrapping even starts. It's ghoulish on purpose, but the actual content is a whole mummification unit: the organs and their canopic jars, the amulets, the seventy days, the journey to the afterlife. Mine will page back to the grossest parts and not notice they've picked up the entire process.
It's the humor door into an Egypt unit. The cartoon panels and short captions carry a child who'd stall in denser nonfiction, and because the jokes are doing the teaching, the details stick. It pairs well with a calm fact book like Mummies Made in Egypt, since the two cover the identical process, one played straight and one for laughs. A child already hooked on the series will grab it for that reason, but it stands on its own for anyone else in the room.