The Mummy tackles three aspects of mummy lore: the history and archeology of mummies, the paranormal and supernatural aspects of mummies, and the portrayals of mummies in movies. The history part is so-so. The supernatural part is bad (which is unfortunate given that the book is in the Monsters and Mythical creatures series and this should be the heart of the book). The movie part is very good, but pointless—the book’s teenage audience won’t care anything about it.
The book starts with a very detailed account of the making and release of the 1932 movie, The Mummy. It’s an excellent account that film buffs might like. Sadly, it won’t be of much interest to the average teen reader.
Next up is the story of Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tut’s Tomb. This is also very detailed and is much more interesting than the intro section. After a blow-by-blow account of the discovery of the tomb, the idea of the Pharaoh’s curse is introduced. I can almost picture a teen smiling and thinking, “finally! Something scary!” But no. After a short description of Lord Carnarvon’s death, only half a page is devoted to the curse itself. . . The teen now sighs with disappointment.
The third section gives a nice account of Egyptian religious beliefs and the mummification processes. The fourth section—at long last—is a description of mummy-related legends and curses. This is probably the most interesting part of the book. Sadly, some of the best stories are revealed to be hoaxes. The book wraps up with a long (13 page) analysis of major mummy films. This section, along with the introductory 5 pages about the 1932 film, means that 18 of The Mummy’s 58 narrative pages (>30%) are devoted to films and film analysis.
The Mummy ends up being rather disappointing. It’s not terrible. But almost all of the historical information is covered more substantially in other teen-focused mummy books (see the various DK books entitled Mummy). Where this book should have excelled—at the supernatural and horror-related aspects of mummies—it totally falls flat. Instead of walking away with spine-tingling chills, a reader will think they’ve accidentally stumbled in a Mummies 101 remedial film class.
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