History Smashers: Ancient Egypt
by Kate Messner
Pub Date: Oct 07 2025
Read courtesy of https://www.netgalley.com/
Book 11 of the "History Smashers" series
With its illustrated sections within chapters and comic book-style storytelling mixed with text,
I really liked the formatting of the book. However...
I really liked the formatting of the book. However...
I felt like there were missed opportunities to define some key words for 8-12 year olds (grades 3-7). For example, early in the book the word 'dynasties' is used. Children might know that word if they are familiar with anime or manga, but even then they might have a skewed meaning of the word. Another example is the use of 'BCE,' which is also never defined nor written out the first time as Before Common Era. Other words in the book, like 'mastabas' and 'bas-relief', should have been described or defined.
I also felt misled that the book was to be about Ancient Egypt, but it was heavily focused on kings, gods, and pharaohs. Even the first chapter was called "People of the Nile," but was only about kings, gods, and pharaohs. Short of a discussion of hieroglyphics and the Rosetta Stone, I found very little through the book about other topics such as daily life or science and medicine. For example, at one point the book randomly mentioned some diseases present in Ancient Egypt, but it didn't relate them to any of the kings being discussed. And why would they tell that people ate desiccated mummy but not tell if people got sick from eating desiccated mummy?
At one point I was confused that the book abruptly switched from telling a story in comic form to text, even though it was a continuation of that story. I also felt the book could have benefitted from offering the readers URLs or some key search words to search rather than a static bibliography.
I wanted to like this much more than I did. History isn't one of my stronger subjects, so I was really hoping I'd learn something more about Ancient Egypt than its kings, gods, and pharaohs.
⭐⭐ 2 stars
