4^th Grade and Up

You Wouldn’t Want to Be an Egyptian Mummy!

Get ready…as a wealthy ancient Egyptian, you are about to drop dead! To enter the afterlife, your body must go through extraordinary processes to become a mummy.

I was fascinated and impressed by all the work that went into mummifying a body. In a nutshell, the body is salted to dry it up, certain organs are taken out and put in jars, rubbed with oils, stuffed with sawdust, wrapped in linens, put in a large coffin called a sarcophagus, and buried in a tomb. The whole process is very time consuming.

Thousands of years later, modern people are opening up long closed tombs, disrupting the dead’s eternal peace. I can understand wanting to understand the history and the science of ancient Egypt but some of the things that were done to these mummified bodies are disturbing and disrespectful of the dead. And I know there’s no such things as a mummy’s curse but why tempt faith.

Ancient Egyptian mythology is elaborate, and I believe it is one of the most fascinating mythology of all time.

You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Chicago Gangster!

Get ready…you’re an undercover cop about to experience the darker side of Chicago. A life of dirty deals and dirtier crooks awaits you as a 1920s gangster.

This book stood out to me because it reminded me of a past book I reviewed Finders Keepersby Shelley Tougas, a story about a girl who tries to find a stash of Al Capone’s stolen money.

This book explains how the gangster life style works by showing how the undercover cop works his way up from the bottom to the top.

This book is pretty tame compared to the others. They don’t show anyone getting put on ice or using the guns on anyone.

I found it amusing how the gangsters would rob banks wearing three-piece suits. It’s like they made a day out of it.

You Wouldn’t Want to Work on the Hoover Dam!

 Get ready…as a construction worker in 1920s America you are about to take part in one of the biggest building projects in history.

There will never be another job like creating the Hoover Dam.

The Hoover Dam helps supply water, protests against floods and to this day is still one of the biggest hydroelectric power plants in the world.

Construction began at the beginning of the Great Depression, bring jobs to over 21,000 people.

There were so many different ways to die; getting hit by falling rocks, heatstroke, heart attacks, and pneumonia.

Is it wrong that I got so much joy out of reading the word ‘dam’ so many times? I also got joy out of the word ‘mucker’, a worker who cleared away mud and rocks.

This weeks’ Weird but True Fact about the Egyptian God Anubis, Chicago, Illinois, and the Hoover Dam

The god Anubis was said to weigh a person’s heart against a feather. If the weights balanced, the person was allowed into the afterlife.

For a taste of Chicago, Illinois, try a deep-dish pizza or Chicago-style hot dogs with so many toppings people say they’re “dragged through the garden”.

A city was built in the 1920s just to house the workers who built the Hoover Dam.