When they stumble upon the abandoned yard of a reclusive old man everyone calls the Professor, their imaginings shape themselves around the histories and myths of Ancient Egypt. She quickly meets Melanie, and her little brother Marshall, and the two girls realize they share a vivid imagination and love of playacting. April has just moved in with her grandmother after being somewhat abandoned by a carefree mom.

The story revolves around a group of neighborhood children who invent a fantasy world for themselves. The truth is that The Egypt Game is actually more of a mystery, with quite a lot of suspense. But it would be more accurate to say that the portal in The Egypt Game is the vivid imaginations of the characters themselves, a magic just as powerful as anything in Narnia. Surely, with a name like that, it must be a portal fantasy full of mummies, pharaohs, and gods (a childhood fancy that is problematic unto itself). I have a feeling that the cover of Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Newbery Honor book The Egypt Game must have tricked me into believing it was a fantasy. Not every single book that I read as a child was a science fiction or fantasy novel, just MOST of them. That was one of the mysterious and fascinating things about it. Ideas began and grew and afterwards it was hard to remember just how. Nobody ever planned it ahead, at least, not very far. But, actually, that was the way with all of the Egypt Game.

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder