Cat Mummies

August 1, 1998
Gr 4-6-Trumble explains and elaborates on a fact that most children's books just make mention of: Egyptians worshipped cats and mummified them using the same techniques they used to preserve their pharaohs. Extensive research is evident in the many original sources quoted and the lengthy bibliography. What emerges from this volume is a fascinating legend of how the Egyptians' devotion to the sacred animals became fanatical-people would rescue their felines from burning buildings and let their belongings go up in smoke-and eventually led to their downfall. In 525 B.C., the Persians shrewdly released cats onto the battlefield; the Egyptians were so confused by trying to avoid killing the whiskered deities that they lost the war. Kubinyi's soft-focus watercolors work well to explain and break up the text. Footnotes, a chronology, a glossary, and a list of museums with cat mummies all reiterate the author's thoroughness in researching her topic.-Cathryn A. Camper, Minneapolis Public Library

September 15, 1996
Gr. 3^-6. Trumble puts a new twist on kids' fascination with mummies--she introduces them to cat mummies. The book starts off intriguingly with the discovery in an Egyptian desert of thousands and thousands of cat mummies that had lain undisturbed for two millennia. How did they get there? And why were cats so important to the Egyptians? To answer those questions, Trumble takes readers back in time to the beginnings of Egyptian civilization, when animal totems protected tribes. Cats, sacred animals and objects of veneration, deserved respect in burial and thus came the mummifications. As in all historical nonfiction, there are lots of names that kids will not be familiar with and dates that tend to impede the flow of the narrative, but Trumble does a good job of keeping the focus on the most interesting part of her story. An enormous help in that regard is Laszlo Kubinyi's artwork. The delightful watercolors not only visually expand the text but also have an easy, inviting quality to them that draws readers right in, starting with the cat mummies on the cover, some wrapped in linen, others with faces of gold. A short description of human mummification, notes, a bibliography, a chronology of Egyptian history, and a list of names and terms are appended in a book that should interest students and browsers alike. ((Reviewed Sept. 15, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)