When I was in elementary and middle school I was knee-deep in curiosity about ancient Egypt. I also wasn’t a reader at that age. The internet didn’t exist and if I wanted to browse information on a topic I had to look through an encyclopedia. Yes, my family had a set of them, which weren’t used nearly as often as my parents would’ve wished. I remember my sister searching in vain for information on the cold war and having to ask my father instead. RIP, the physical monolith of Encyclopedia Britannica. Actual Factual Files: Ancient Egypt is the time-traveling book I needed when I was seven years old.
Ancient Egypt is written and presented in a manner that entertains and speaks to middle-through upper elementary ages. Most importantly for erstwhile scientists, it doesn’t baby down the information. There are millennia of great stories and scientific discoveries that young audiences can discover in Egypt. However, like me not wanting to dredge the encyclopedia for information, they want to discover it on their own in a manner that’s age-appropriate. The horse can’t be made to drink water and kids can’t be made to learn.
But what if kids were motivated, inspired, or tricked into wanting to learn? Actual Factual Files: Ancient Egypt doesn’t trick children into reading. Instead, its packaging is realistic Egypt facts and stories, as a seven-year-old wants them to be displayed. It sounds glib to say it like that, because if it were that simple, then surely audiences, parents and educators would see other topics in this format, right? No, it’s hard, threading the camel through the eye of the needle is difficult, yet this format nails fun education in the form of entertainment to the wall.
The shape of the book, Actual Factual Files unconsciously sets the book up for success. The book is hand-held for those young audiences. It’s not as big as an illustrated book, because illustrated books are for younger readers. That’s what the kids would think. This book is paperback, like the trade paperbacks the smart parents read when they go on vacation. They might think that too.
The illustrations are interesting for the elementary school demographic, but they’re not too young. If the illustrations were cartoonish then kids would tune out and be much less likely to pick the book up. There are dozens upon dozens of illustrations, graphs or charts that don’t give children the option to put the book down. They can’t say that this doesn’t look interesting. Kids are already hardwired to be curious about ancient Egypt because of the pyramids and mummies. Including illustrations that allow young audiences to be curious, and not treated like babies, it gives them the go-ahead to read and enjoy.
The subtle big-kid fun continues with the table of contents. There’s so much data in Actual Factual Files: Ancient Egypt that it could contain dozens of chapters. Instead, there are dozens of subject areas that are related in some tacit sense. You can consider them chapters, but for us they blend so quickly and don’t offer the natural reading pauses, that a chapter provides. The chapters in Ancient Egypt also build upon one another.
Similar to chapters in early reader books, they push the totality of the story forward. It’s a narrative, non-fiction story that bases the curiosity that children have for mummies and pyramids as it fuel, and it works. When kids turn to any page they’ll be sucked in and continue reading. I opened Ancient Egypt to some random pages and was greeted by hieroglyphics, animal mummies, the Book of the Dead and Cleopatra. The pages had succinct, two-pages of background and information that were written at an upper-elementary school level. All of the pages are complemented with illustrations ranging from half a page to a quarter-page.
The amazing part is, after jumping to a random page and reading it, you thumb backwards to read them, or at least see the illustrations for the parts that you skipped. However, the odds are that you’ll read it, and by you, I mean those mid-elementary school students. Bonus: The text and information in Actual Factual Files: Ancient Egypt is intelligent enough to educate those middle school students. The same, at ease, non-judgmental vibe that the younger ages will perceive translates to older readers and is 100% edutainment.
Actual Factual Files: Ancient Egypt is by Heather Alexander and Ali Adams, and is available on Workman Kids.
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