Howard and the Mummy: Howard Carter and the Search for King Tut’s Tomb by Tracey Fern (review)

The author/illustrator team that brought readers Barnum’s Bones (BCCB 7/12) and W Is for Webster (BCCB 72/16) returns with the kid-pleasing tale of how English Egyptologist Howard Carter unearthed the ever-so-famous tomb of the previously-not-so-famous boy king. The now legendary candle test for toxic gases and the first peek through the ancient door at “wonderful things!” is certainly the anticipated climax here, but Fern turns the biographical run-up into a story nearly as fascinating and just as important. She discusses the local private collection that sparked Carter’s childhood interests, his early field years copying inscriptions, his dogged pursuit of skills that would help him become an excavator, the legal permissions required to excavate in Egypt, and the unmethodical state of early twentieth century archaeology that made locating promising sites so difficult. Kulikov’s signature hashed line and watercolor artwork is rife with wry humor, an imaginative fusion of literal and symbolic scenes, detailed maps and cartouches, inventively bordered and collaged compositions. An author’s note adds information on Carter and his benefactor, the earl of Carnarvon, and touches on the infamous “mummy’s curse,” sensibly dismissing it with Carter’s summary of “tommyrot.”