The Egypt Game

The Egypt Game Summary | Plot Summary

April Hall has been sent to live with her paternal grandmother, Caroline Hall. Although she misses her mother, Dorothea, and longs for the time when she can return to her, April knows she must make the best of the situation.

Not long after moving in with her grandmother, April meets a fellow sixth-grader named Melanie Ross. A fast friendship is formed when the two girls discover they share a vivid imagination and love for inventing stories and making up games. Of particular interest to both girls is ancient Egypt, and both Melanie and April spend time learning about Egypt and its ceremonies after finding a hidden storage yard in which to play. Along for the ride is also Melanie's four-year-old brother, Marshall. The storage yard is in back of a shop run by a reclusive Professor. He is as mysterious as their new game, The Egypt Game.

Melanie works hard to help April fit in at her new school. A child of Hollywood, April has a fondness for wearing false eyelashes and her hair in a dramatic upsweep much like her mother does when she is acting in movies. Thanks to Melanie, April is able to easily discard the "Hollywood act" and make new friends at Wilson School. Another new girl, fourth-grader Elizabeth Chung, moves into the same building as Melanie and April and becomes a member of the Egypt gang.

Not long after school starts, a neighborhood girl is murdered and her body is found in a nearby marsh. This throws the entire neighborhood into a state of panic and paralysis and The Egypt Game is put on hold while children are kept indoors to play. On Halloween night two fathers of Wilson School students take a large group of kids trick-or-treating. Melanie and April's secret game is discovered by two sixth-grade boys, Ken Kamata and Toby Alvillar, who are from the girls' class. Initially, they invite the boys to join in order to make sure that they don't tell on them.

As the game goes along and as fall turns into winter, Ken and Toby continue to participate in The Egypt Game. One night, while April is babysitting Marshall, the two of them go to the land of Egypt to rescue April's math book. As a result of this adventure, April is attacked by a man, but is rescued thanks to the Professor's help. If it hadn't been for the Professor yelling out for help, April could have met with the same fate as the neighborhood girl who was killed.

The land of Egypt is closed down because of what happened to April (the loose board in a wooden fence is replaced and there's no other way into the yard). Over Christmas vacation, the Professor meets with all of the kids from The Egypt Game and gives them each their own key to the new padlock on the storage yard door. This permits them to continue their game, which he had watched with a rapt attention all along.