Wednesday 30 March 2016

A LOTTIE LIPTON ADVENTURE: THE EGYPTIAN ENCHANTMENT by Dan Metcalf. Reviewed by Saviour Pirotta

Title: A Lottie Lipton Adventure: The Egyptian Enchantment
Author and illustrator: Dan Metcalf
Publisher: A&C Black
Publication date:  11 Feb 2016

9 year old Lottie Lipton is a plucky girl who lives in the British Museum with her Great Uncle Bert, a curator with a passion for ancient history. Lottie is an investigator extraordinaire and the exhibits in the world famous museum provide all sorts of opportunities for sleuthing and derring-do with a magic twist. The Egyptian Enchantment is the third title in a series of four.

When Lottie accidentally reads a spell, she makes a gang of newly delivered ancient Egyptian shabtis come alive. Shabtis were little figures of baked clay that people in ancient Egypt buried with their loved ones to act as servants and slaves in the afterlife. The lot in this story are over the moon at being set free from their bondage and proceed to wreak havoc all over the British Museum. Lottie must use all her skills and ingenuity to capture them and get the situation under control before a delegation of important people arrive for a conference. Will she do it? And will the bumbling Uncle Bert and the hapless janitor Reg help or hinder her?

The 7 year old kids I read this too absolutely loved it, especially the bits about the sniggering shabtis going berserk all over the museum.  Dan Metcalf keeps the language simple, making the story easy to follow and a pleasure to read. There are wonderful characters, some nice plot twists, lots of humour, great line drawings and puzzles to solve too. The last was especially popular with my testers. They had not read any of the other Lottie Lipton adventures before but that didn't hinder the enjoyment of the story. Each book in the series works as a standalone. And they were eager to get their hands on the other three books, which we are going to get from the library.

A winner all round!



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2 comments:

Dan Metcalf said...

Thanks Saviour! Great review :¬)

Saviour Pirotta said...

Really enjoyed it, Dan. As did a Year 3 class I read it with.

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