Wednesday, 17 May 2017

Horrible Histories: The Awesome Egyptians by Terry Deary – Book Review



Publisher’s write-up:

‘History with the nasty bits left in!
The Awesome Egyptians gives you some awful information about phabulous Pharaohs and poverty-stricken peasants – who lived an awesome 5,000 years ago!
Want to know:
  • ·         Which king had the worst blackheads?
  • ·         Why some kings had to wear false beards?
  • ·         Why the peasants were revolting?

Read on to find some foul facts about death and decay, revolting recipes for 3,000-yeear-old sweets, how to make a mean mummy, and some awful Egyptian arithmetic.’

This is a book on Egyptian History from the Horrible Histories Series from Terry Deary and Peter Hepplewhite. The book is filled with interesting facts, funny illustrations and anecdotes, primarily intended for school children.

The book covers nearly every popular aspect of Ancient Egypt such as how life depended on the river Nile, the pyramids, certain myth busting on pyramids (it was not necessarily a grave!), famous pharaohs, the ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, the rituals, about mummies and finally, certain instructions on creating ancient Egyptian devices and cuisine.

The book had some really good illustrations, mixed with a lot of humour. Additionally, I also liked the fact that the book covered most of aspects of Egypt that we might have heard of but not necessarily know about. The book also gave the right focus on not just the aristocracy, but also the lifestyle of the common people in Ancient Egypt. This book communicated history in a very interesting manner, especially considering the target audience of the book and making a page turner out of a topic like history is quite an achievement in itself.

The only aspect I felt was that the proportion of jokes in the book could have been reduced a little, beyond a point, it just got repetitive and of course, diluted the content of the book considering there are only 126 pages in total.

I read this book seven years ago (when I was in school) and enjoyed reading it then, and even today, my enjoyment was not any less and it satisfied every expectation that I normally have from a Horrible Histories book. On the whole, I would award the book a rating of seven on ten.

Rating – 7/10

Have a nice day,

Andy

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