When I was eight, during the summer between third and fourth grade, my parents took my sister and me halfway around the world to the Philippines. The trip was my first venture outside the United States, my first plane ride, and my first time in a country that spoke a completely different language. It wasn't a random trip to a random country - my mother is Filipina, and we had (and still have) extensive family out there. I spent most of my time running around, exploring the countryside where my family lived on the slope of the Mayon Volcano. My favorite haunt was a dilapidated church and the adjacent graveyard. I was obsessed with the cracked gravestones and the icon of Mary with the faded paint and a chipped hand. Unlike Gabe in Goosebumps: The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, I never came face to face with a supernatural creature, but I like to think I had an adventure, albeit a safe one.
R. L. Stine's Goosebumps: The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb was an absolute delight to read. This is what I came to Goosebumps for: kids my age (or slightly older) overcoming scary situations with a little dash of humor. While on a trip to his ancestral home of Egypt, our protagonist, Gabe, explores the Great Pyramid of Giza. Gabe is a sweet kid and his uncle, scientist Ben Hassan, is a likable adult who helps his nephew. Gabe's adversary is his cousin, and Ben's daughter, Sari, who is charming in her own way. I'm looking forward to exploring this book - this reminder of why I loved these books so much as a kid.
SPOILERS AFTER THE COVER!!!
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What will wake the dead? Anything! I have that mummy wrapped around my little finger! I'll let myself out.
The book starts at the Great Pyramid and a thirsty child. Gabe asks his parents for water.
"We can't give you a drink now," she answered, staring at the pyramid. "Stop acting like you're four. You're twelve, remember?"
"Twelve-year-olds get thirsty, too," I muttered. "All this sand in the air, it's making me gag."
"Look at the pyramid," she said, sounding a little irritated. "That's why we came here. We didn't come here to get a drink."
Hey, Mom, you can drink and look at pyramids at the same time. The end of the first chapter surprised me. Instead of a danger that is revealed to not be a danger at all, we have an ominous passage:
"I'm afraid you'll just have to appreciate the pyramid from the outside," Dad said, peering over the yellow sand, trying to focus the binoculars.
"I've already appreciated it," I told him glumly. "Can we get a drink now?"
Little did I know that in a few days, Mom and Dad would be gone, and I would be deep inside the pyramid we were staring at. Not just inside it, but trapped inside it, sealed inside it - probably forever.
I'm in. I'm interested. I want to know where the story is going, and I'm happy the first chapter's cliffhanger wasn't some fake out.
Gabe's dismissive parents are quickly ushered away from the book and our protagonist is left with his Uncle Ben Hassan, an Egyptologist with a daughter, Sari. Gabe has an adversarial relationship with Sari. She treats him like a child despite their identical ages. She has a strained relationship with her cousin, but she has a great relationship with her father - one that sometimes forces Gabe to look at them through an invisible barrier. The father and daughter have inside jokes and play pranks on Gabe. He gets frustrated with them, but, as a reader, I never felt the jokes were too malicious, and I have the notion that Uncle Ben has played these pranks on his daughter and that the source of their inside jokes. He's trying to pull his nephew into a relationship the only way he knows how - jokes.
