"The Promise of Eternity..."

Author: Nathaniel Harris
Created and Designed by: David Salariya
Title: Mummies; A Very Peculiar History
Publisher: Franklin Watts, 1995
Genre: Nonfiction
Pages: 48
Reading Level (Lexile): 960L

I found this book in my local Library, in the Children’s Nonfiction section.

Plot Summary: Although this book does not have a plot, the book is organized into different chapters. Each chapter covers different information about mummies. The pages have a lot of diagrams and captions to go along with the pictures. There is a ton of information about mummies as well as the Egyptian people and their beliefs. The book kind of has a spooky tone to it, which makes it a little more exciting to read! The book also goes through the mummification process and talks about the afterlife of Egyptians.

Mummies relates to my theme because the Egyptians had unique relationships with each other and the Gods they believed in. They did unique things to their corpses in order to mummify them and truly believed they would go to a better place. They took great care in wrapping them and placing objects in their tombs that they would need in the afterlife.
I could relate with this book because it reminded me of when I was able to visit an exhibit on King Tut. I had previously seen some Egyptian artifacts in the exhibit, but I was able to learn new things about mummies.

Mummies is an excellent book to use a resource in the classroom. Because of its “spooky” tone and the content, I would probably use this with upper elementary students. This book does some content that older students would be able to handle. Mummies would be a great nonfiction book to use as a research project, or just to learn more about mummies. I think students would really like diving into this book because of the pictures. In my experience, kids love nonfiction books, especially boys. I think kids would love to read this and find out more about the complex world of the Egyptians.