Oops, I Kidnapped a Pharaoh!
Luan Goldie
Walker Books

K-Pop obsessed Skylar and her best friend, Dana find themselves on a time-travelling adventure after being picked up from school by Skylar’s eccentric Nana in her tuk-tuk. One minute they’re driving back from school and the next they’re in the middle of a desert surrounded by date palms without Nana who runs a catering company and has vanished in search of ingredients for her famous ‘sweet’n’wild fig and falafel burritos’.

After their initial amazement that they’ve time travelled to Ancient Egypt, the friends start to search for Nana, adapting to the new, strange environment. On entering a large courtyard set up for a show of some kind, music begins and from behind a curtain shimmies a boy wearing a gold cloak whom they surmise is the main attraction. He proceeds to perform an amazing slick, synchronised dance routine and Skylar is inspired to join in with some K-pop style moves of her own. The crowd goes wild and the girls realise that the boy dancer is Tutankhamun aged about ten or eleven.

Having found Nana with her purchase and learned that the time travelling was a mistake, they go back to the tuk-tuk, jump in and return to their own time, only to discover that a small boy, aka Tutankhamun, has hitched a ride back to the twenty first century. What can they do about having a boy king from 1331BCE who appears to have a strange affinity with Skylar’s cat and a penchant for Nana’s burritos, to stay overnight? They put him in Skylar’s brother’s bedroom and the girls go off the Skylar’s bedroom and start chatting about their favourite K-pop stars. But there’s still the massive problem of getting the boy back to his own place and time as soon as they can. The trouble is their visitor wants some fun and when they go out, he quickly starts attracting attention at the K-Mania Food Village, so there’s not a minute to lose. It’s back into the tuk-tuk again and yes they do go to Egypt but not in ancient times, nor with the little pharaoh aboard.

With problems aplenty to resolve, the time travelling friends have encounters with Marie Curie, Shakespeare and Henry VIII, all the while making sure the tuk-tuk has the fuel to run on, in their mission to return to Ancient Egypt.

A very funny, fast-paced roller coaster of a read for older primary children or to read aloud with an upper KS2 class: I enjoyed it even more than the Headteacher story in the series.