Tutankhamen's Gift

©® Bowden's Masonry/Another Day Music/Designing By Grace

No one does a "pop - up book" better than Robert Sabuda.An Egyptian fan for a long time, this book was a perfect giftfor myself. Spent literally hours with it !

Yes, this book was inaccurate at times. But guys, if we were to teach children king tuts actual story, it would wreak havoc on their tiny little hearts. That being said: I was highly skeptical about this book because every king tut book is super generic and just emphasizes that he was the boy king and he was a boy and young and king and YAY!!! /sigh.Well! When I read this book I fell out of my chair. What was covered in this book was Akhenaten's attempt to unify the gods at the cost of all of Egypt's lore and former deities. He was the first iconoclast (destroyer of art) and the first visionary to saw god as one deity and not many (ie the first monotheist!!). I learned this in art history class when i was in my twenties and I felt ripped off only discovering it so late in life! This book starts a discussion on the value of art and culture among much younger students (ten-year-old's in my case). And the kids LOVED this book. They discussed in great length and with much excitement Akhenaten's decision, while marveling at the brilliant illustrations in this book. This book was a conversation starter and had the kids so passionate and excited about Egypt and about their gods and culture.Your students or children WILL hear about King Tut 100 times more in their lives --but please do not blow the opportunity to show them this book which wonderfully explains what actually happened with the worship of Aten, destruction of art, and huge shift and response in culture. (You could also explain some of the historical anomalies, which i'm pretty sure are explained in the back of the book in a gigantic outro paragraph).

Tutankhamen was the son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye and the younger brother of Akhenaten. The book is correct and some people have been mis-informed. It's a great children's book, story and illustrations!

I love Robert Sabuda's work and this is no exception! The problem with trying to interest young children in ancient history is that little is written in biographical fashion for young readers. Apart from encyclopedia or fact books, there are few good books on the ancient civilisations. It is therefore refreshing that Sabuda has put together this story about a boy king. It is made even more gorgeous by the artwork which painstakingly recreates the art of that great civilisation on papyrus-like backgrounds. Check out also Saint Valentine by the same author.As to a reviewer's comment that Amazon should make it clear that this is not a pop-up book, I would have thought that the price tag (at 6.99) and the fact that it is a paperback book should have made this self-evident! That's not reason enough to bring down this book's rating!

I agree with the other negative reviews that there are several inaccuracies in this book, the most obvious being that Tutankhamen's father was Amenhotep IV, not Amenhotep III. However, we used this book to supplement our curriculum on Tutankhamen, not to be the sole resource for facts. The art in this book is vibrant and beautiful. My 11 year old daughter used it to inspire her own drawn depiction of Tutankhamen's life. For the illustrations alone, I feel like it deserves credit. Don't depend on the facts of this book to inform your children on Tutankhamen's life. Instead, use it to create an incredible visual of a young boy in a far off, ancient land, and to inspire an interest in the color, dynamism, and nature of another culture.

I am a fan of Sabuda's. But I was surprised to find this wasn't a pop-up book. The story about the Egyptian struggle to resolve the issue of one or many gods was well built into a story about courage of one's convictions tho a footnote telling that in later centuries several religions do maintain that there is only one god. Illustrations are glorious.

Perhaps the book is speculative or dated, but it is inaccurate in several areas. I will not be using it in my classroom.

excellent book

すべてのページがパピルスのような背景に描かれていてエジプトっぽさ満開です。英語でかかれているものの、簡単な英語と、ファラオなどの固有名詞が少しあるぐらいなので小学生のお子さんなら読めると思います。インテリアとして飾っていても素敵な本なので手に取る価値はあると思います。

安いからって、よく確かめずに買ってしまった。これはペーパーバックで普通のパンフレットみたいな絵本。もちろん仕掛け無しで、ページをめくっても何の仕掛けもありません。私が欲しかったのは、ハードカバーの仕掛け絵本のほう。みなさんも気をつけましょう。って間違える人なんかいないか…