The Sea Spicer

The Sea Spicer
Yours truly

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Pretending Ancient Egypt


Summer Reading Camp reads Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Egypt Game 

Our 11 year old reader's school-assigned summer reading for beginning 6th grade is The Egypt Game. My kids half a generation ago read this novel at that age, I remembered as I re-read it. It's a little dated. We still found it to be a fun hook for the upcoming year's social studies curriculum in the ancient civilizations and mythologies.

Here are activities we did to increase our reader's motivation and daily anticipation of what would happen in "Egypt" today!


"Hieroglyphics"

I'm proud to share that our reader was inspired, all on his own, to create a hieroglyphic alphabet to use for secret messages--many chapters before the kids in the book thought of it!

alphabet letters and pictograms drawn in pencil by a child

Egyptian Feast

Dining table behind a string curtain, before a gold draperied window
We prepared some Egyptian recipes, in a basic, homemade approximation. I've attempted Northern African cooking and spice mixes before, for a Casablanca Valentine's Day celebration with my grown children. It's one of my son's favorite cuisines, thanks to many wonderful authentic local restaurants. 

Our current reader however is a very picky eater. He refuses new foods presented at home or restaurants. But for some reason at our annual reading camp, he delights in wowing his parents by reporting the novelties he tried with us. 

He liked koshari, and even requested it again the next day! The dish is a warmly spiced comfort food of rice, lentils, pasta and chickpeas. He ate the chicken kebabs and kofta. He liked the pita style bread, and drank tea. He was unsure about dates, and turned down eggplant and hummus.
pictures of foods
table setting, pottery pitchers and urnsI wrote a menu in his invented hieroglyphs on an onionskin scroll, and set the table with lots of gold and black, jewel tone colors, urns and pots, pottery plates, "firebowl" candles, orchids, and some totems and stylized sculptures.






Processions, Prostration, Hide and Seek with "Security"

Plush realistic looking ocotopus toy
Besides food, we always need lots of physical activity between chapters. 

We held processions. My reader had to learn and act out the word "prostrated".

The little brother of one character carries a security plushie around, an octopus named Security. My reader named our own guest Octavius. We took turns hiding and finding him one day, after the chapters where Security goes missing, and is found in a mysterious place.

Assembling a Pyramid

I provide a square plate as a base and a sack of oranges, and had our reader guess the number of oranges he needed to make a pyramid. He guessed wrong but successfully built a pyramid (three levels took 14 oranges...it will be a math formula to learn eventually...).

Thoth's Choice

In the book, the kids use a taxidermy owl to represent Thoth, whom they employ as an "oracle".

Our table included Thoth, and we sought the oracle's direction as to who should read each of the next chapters, (student aloud, teacher aloud, silent reading, student's choice).
Table setting, pyramid of oranges, statuettes and dishes

Wooden puzzle box on table, decorated with ancient Egyptian style drawings
Pharaoh's Tomb puzzle box

Setting the Mood with Puzzles, Movies, Music

Box picture, 300 piece puzzle, Ancient Egypt pharaoh tomb, sun and moon, Egyptian deities
Ancient Egypt Artifacts Jigsaw Puzzle:
We're still working on this, after we concluded reading!









poster of Karloff as The Mummy, ancient Egyptian woman
Since we were suffering a heat wave, we were indoors in air conditioning for some of our reading.It was helpful to catch some Mummy movie clips about archeologists and tomb raiding imperialists, to understand the costumes the kids in the book sought to achieve, and to see the artwork to understand why the children played at walking in the peculiar way they did.

We even caught a clip of Steve Martin's King Tut routine on Saturday Night Live, and listened to the Bangles performing Walk Like an Egyptian.

In the trick or treat chapter, we shared Halloween candy, (still got leftovers!). We celebrated the final chapter with the Christmas cookies and cider, just like the characters.


Controversies


Banned Book

What a learning opportunity for both of us! I shared with our reader that The Egypt Game is a "banned book" in many places.  

I hadn't anticipated how very challenging it was for our child reader to understand the distinctions between his taste in a book, literary critique of a book, and the removal or destruction of a book to render it unavailable or illegal to read. This made for the most interesting discussions, always asking for him to explain the "why" of his opinion.

I was even more surprised to learn that our student, who can so faithfully recite the Bill of Rights after learning about the American Revolution in school this past year, had not understood that "free speech" may include books and writings.

I did reflect on the question of cultural appropriation in our activities or even in the novel. The book was a school assignment, not our choice. We had some fun and participated in the children's awe while they engaged in their pretend play. We playfully introduced the popular cultural perception of the ancient history and civilization, and affirmed that Egypt the place, culture and people are with us today. I used a history timeline book and even trusty World Book.
My daughter as a tot used to play the Catholic Mass with stuffed animals and dolls, and, once reading, wrote her own additional book of the Bible. I could see she was learning. 

We did our best.

I neglected to include a viewing of The Prince of Egypt, which I haven't seen.  I may check it out. What do you think? I hope you enjoyed these resources ideas. 

I wonder if the 6th grade will be visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as my kids' grade did?



Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Midwinter Drama

A Theater Mystery 
Author's Notes regarding Local and Personal History

Third book in The Freep Investigates Mysteries Series is finally out, ready early for next Christmas: Midwinter's Drama - A Theater Mystery Novel, for middle grades, teens and tweens.

The kids join a community theater production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, set in Midwinter. Like the rest of the Scooby-Doo-style series, there's a ghost story in the history of the one-room schoolhouse now used as a little theater, and then strange mishaps haunt the production. The Freep reporters have to discover the secret cause now, or the show will be cancelled!

The Shakespeare original is sufficient inspiration for all kinds of stories, but these author's notes capture some of the local and personal history behind the fictional Midwinter's Drama. 

I Was in a Play

If opportunity presents, participate in a live theater performance—onstage or backstage, in your school or community, or as the audience!

I was a tall child, almost always the tallest in the class. Everyone wanted to be the tallest, and they were always measuring themselves against me to check. My best buddy then was small and cute. Teachers called us "Mutt and Jeff". Mutt and Jeff were a pair of physically mismatched friends in one of the first newspaper daily comic strips.

When I was in fifth grade, about ten years old, I had a starring role in a school play. It was a musical, The Seven Old Ladies of Lavender Town. (The "Operetta in Two Parts" by H.C. Bunner is in the public domain and currently available as a free download from Forgotten Books.)

I volunteered to play the part of The Duchess in the school musical. My best friend volunteered to be The Fairy. But then we found out that one person had to play both parts, because the Duchess is revealed to be the Fairy in disguise. My friend really wanted the part. The teacher assigned both roles to me, figuring I could play the fairy more easily than my short friend could play the duchess. She had to play one of the old ladies.

My costume was simple. I wore a pleated gauze skirt and a satin blouse. It was my Easter dress. Because I had big feet, (adult size), and because grown up women did not wear flat shoes that year, my dress shoes had heels. The only thing I remember about the play was how the audience gasped when the curtains opened to reveal that I was really the Fairy! The transformation was marked only by a cape made of lace with glittering threads, worn around the shoulders of my same dress.

I tell this story because of the cat fight in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream between Helena and Hermia, the tall and small jokes. The theme sparks a subplot within Midwinter's Drama, where everyone is still growing, and adolescent performers may hide budding anxieties about size, shape, and competition for attention.


Both my own children performed in their middle school musicals. My daughter didn't get the lead she read for, but as one of the more mature looking girls, played one of the mothers.

My son and his buddy decided in eighth grade, the year they were graduating to go up to high school, that they would do every school activity offered before they left "childhood" behind. They were awarded very funny roles in a musical which played more like a comedy variety show. Their ridiculous costumes, (involving a farmer and his pig), were a perfect fit for their spontaneous shenanigans.

My daughter eventually performed in multiple productions, as cast or crew—even as Dramaturg—in college theater. We got to meet theater people!


Farm building in snow
The farm next door
The Little Red Schoolhouse

One Room Schoolhouse

As a child, my daughter had participated in a youth community theater program run by a warm and talented young adult student named Miranda. Miranda's teenaged brother helped out too. My kid performed as Amponsah, the narrator of a series of Anansi stories.

The troupe rehearsed and performed in our town's Little Red Schoolhouse, built in 1873. This schoolhouse was the first in the area built to serve as a tuition-free public school following New Jersey's 1871 Free School Bill. The new law made public school free, with compulsory attendance, nine months a year, for children ages 5 to 18; it established a school tax to pay for the schools. The one room served grades 1-8 for two local municipalities. It served as a school until 1950. The building is now used as a community resource. The schoolhouse is next to preserved farmland and across from the flood plain where cows graze.

When little "Amponsah" grew up, she worked for some time as a historic interpreter playing, among other roles, the schoolteacher in the historic one-room Bunker Hill School, relocated to and preserved at the Red Mill Museum Village in Clinton, New Jersey.

Ice Skating

When we had winters here, our family and friends skated outdoors on local ponds and even on our own backyard, which used to flood and then freeze into a glassy freeway!

Author's Brother on Frozen Yard


Homeschool

Before I even had children, I was interested in the homeschooling movement. My children did ultimately attend fine schools, after preschool education at home. I remained involved with homeschoolers through my family law work, through friendships with some of my favorite families, and as a children's librarian.

All these experiences contribute to Midwinter's Drama, but this story is fiction. Not even the schoolhouse in the story is identical to the real one, but an imaginary composite of many American one-room schoolhouses. The children in the Freep mysteries are mostly homage to the children, ethnically and economically diverse, whom I taught in church classes, in schools and at the library.

Shakespeare for You

A Midsummer Night's Dream is often children's first exposure to Shakespeare. They may have to read it, in middle school or high school English classes; or maybe at an even younger age, they have the opportunity, with their family, to see the play performed. Perhaps the fairies are considered appealing to children, or the themes of love, law, and competition, suitable for teens.

My family has seen the play many times, performed and set in both Midsummer, and Midwinter, in ancient Greece, or in Victorian England.

I hope the summary, quotations, and explorations of its plot in Midwinter's Drama: A Theater Novel help young readers enjoy and understand the play.

You can find and read the entire play for free online at Folger Shakespeare Library.

Other Shakespeare enjoyable for children, (at least my children fondly remember these!), include, believe it or not: King Lear, (there was a storm outside the theater just as the storm raged onstage, and my little boy especially enjoyed the Fool); and The Tempest, with shipwreck, sorcery, monsters, and love, on a desert island.

Teens are often required to read or see Romeo and Juliet. Also popular are Macbeth, with its witches and war, and Hamlet, with its ghost.

In books of poetry for children, Shakespeare's is often included. In third grade, my son had to memorize a poem. He was inspired by this one from Shakespeare's Richard II:


This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…

 

Now that gives me a pang of nostalgia for national pride. 


May all my readers be blessed, in sleep, in dreams, and on waking.

Monday, August 26, 2024

Guilty Pleasures: Watching Evil; Reading Magic


 

“Artists are tricky fellows, sir, forever reshaping the world according to some design of their own,” said Strange. “Indeed they are not unlike magicians in that.”


    --Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell


Evil; Truthseekers; Bodkin;

and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the Book is Better

frog at night


Why to Watch My Show: Evil



My guilty pleasure is watching the series Evil.


Even friends whose tastes usually differ from mine, watch this religiously.  The whole series has just concluded and all episodes are available to watch. The series is from Robert and Michelle King, who also made The Good Wife, (I haven’t seen it).


I originally watched a few episodes privately, just in the background while I was doing some household chore. That’s when I try out silly shows my family would not appreciate, I just put them on for company. Then this one left the platform I was watching on, or we canceled that streaming option, and I didn’t see it again.


When I found it again I shared it with my family during prime time viewing, and  it became My Show. My grandmother had “her serial”; remember when women would have a soap they preferred and would put it on for company while ironing or something? Evil is “my show”. My comfort viewing. 

My multi-generational adult family enjoys Evil with me.

I describe it as cozy paranormal. Cozy exorcism. It reminds me of X Files, probably for the chemistry, and the almost-humorous plots. Other reviewers have likewise referenced the X Files comparison.

We love it because it is ridiculous. The demons are mostly, of course, ridiculous. The evil antagonists are very, very funny. We almost always chuckle out loud, in every episode. All of the actors are perfect individually, and in their chemistry together. The nods and winks of tropes for the audience, in contrast with the deadpan earnestness of the characters, tickle me to death.

Three “assessors” work for the Church investigating various alleged supernatural phenomena, most often to rule out demonic activity.

The Assessors

The team includes two nonbelievers: a petite cute-sexy forensic psychologist, Kristen, and a snarky yet gentle tech scientist, Ben. They partner with David, a smoldering-sexy and sincere priest. 

Kristen and family:

Kristen’s husband is usually away running a mountain climbing expedition, and he dabbles in Eastern spiritual practices. She herself was raised Catholic but has firmly rejected faith.

Their four entertaining daughters all always talk simultaneously in a wonderfully chaotic babble, and for some reason attend Catholic school, I suppose because they live in New York where it’s a common private school choice for educational reasons.

I love the Catholic church-adjacent context of the series, the context of so many Americans who left the church but have some fondness for and aggravation with its markers. 

Kristen’s mother Sheryl becomes a significant, addictive character, sucked into performing something as a double agent between her role as grandma to Kristen’s kids, and a girlfriend/employee to demons and participant in truly evil practices.

Ben:

Ben, the tech expert, has rejected his family’s Muslim faith. His sister remains devout even while she is a talented scientist, whom he often consults for her superior skills. 

David:

David as a novice to the priesthood is fighting to maintain his own faith, among cynical priests and institutional church hierarchy, and the affectionate ridicule of his science-worshiping friends.

A compelling theme is how the three friends accept and love each other even with such core disagreements.

David’s quarters are eventually inhabited by the temptation of a demon in Kristen’s form, exaggeratedly seductive. Kristen faces her own temptations, mutual and otherwise.

So many entertaining characters:

Leland is a wonderfully funny, dorky yet cunning demon in human form. 

Dr. Kurt Boggs, a psychiatrist therapist,  is such a well-intentioned good man that I root for him even when he succumbs to temptation in practicing dark arts; he just seems so inherently of good will, an innocent.

Sister Andrea portrays the no-nonsense nun heroine, the most gifted vanquisher of evil, condemned by the banal male church hierarchy to clean and launder, keep quiet and get out of the way. 

I might have picked Sister Andrea as my favorite character, but I can’t pick just one, they are all my favorites! This is my show! 


Action!

Hilariously, Sister Andrea, Kristen and Sheryl, each individually, often confront and sometimes outwit the cabals of corporate or church chauvinism.

The episodes each address a “chapter” of a pop-up book about evil, the kind of “guilty pleasure” kids might like to scare themselves with. Often the supernatural event assessed begins with the daughters’ schoolyard games and legends or internet memes.

Each situation revolves around a fear, like night terrors, dolls, elevators, cops, fire, the IRS, UFOs, sex, parenting, silence, death. 

Warning: the material gets a bit spicier with progressive seasons. The first season is pretty tame, with a demon that’s just a little scary; a family with kids could manage it. It’s a grown-up show in subsequent seasons, not as sexually graphic as most streaming shows but some episodes have darker contexts. The scary monsters don’t get worse, those are usually just funny. 

A conspiracy plot involving, among other evils, a potential Antichrist baby, plays out over the subsequent seasons.

Who can resist layers of Vatican secret armies, or the mob-like 66 "families" ? Best of all every episode pairs our phobias with some real or almost-real science or human cultural phenomenon. 

I join the Evil legions who are sad it's over, for now. 

church


Truthseekers, a short paranormal series


This streaming series earned our delighted chuckles over its portrayal of some current cultural phenomena. I know these people!


The big guy in his watch cap, beard and shorts, holds a tech day job involving installation and troubleshooting for WiFi customers of some cable company. His sidegig is paranormal investigator, with detection gear of his own invention, and his own podcast channel.


The online cosplay makeup influencer is an obsessive fan convention devotee. She meticulously creates prize-winning costumes in which to attend an annual con. Though she bravely attempts every year, she phobically fails to muster appearing in person.


The cranky, aging father-in-law, a target of jokes for his comedic senior habits, stubbornly advances his own demise by embracing a fraudster.


A movie fan’s inside joke: Malcolm McDowell plays this aging parent, and the ultimate conflict in the conspiracy plot incorporates nods to his role in A Clockwork Orange.


Bodkin


Bodkin is billed as a comedy and a mystery. True crime podcasters and a transplanted native Irish journalist head to Ireland to investigate a years old cold case disappearance from a Samhain festival, the Celtic foundation for Halloween. Isn’t that enough to make you watch? 

[Note: If it matters to you, there is a gratuitous sexual encounter. We fast-forwarded past it. Usually I just turn it off, but I was committed enough to the series to watch the rest!]

library magic


The Book is Better: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell



It is 19th century England. "Magic” is now a distant chapter within England’s glorious history. Current “magicians” are academics, the men who study the history.


However, a very few are discovered, hidden away in a remote country house, or unbeknown even to themselves, or disguised amongst the common charlatans who perform tricks, who do have the ability to practice the old magic. 


The government enlists one such magician, Mr Norrell, and an ambitious upstart studying with him, Jonathan Strange, to aid them in prosecuting the Napoleonic war.

In support of his own ambition, Norrell aids an important personage whose new wife is gravely ill. He summons, with distaste, a malicious fairy king to resurrect Lady Pole from death. 

As I watched a few episodes on TV, the fairy and his realm seemed too dark and frightening to me, with the intensity of a serial killer, though he had a great look.

The fairy is known as a “gentleman with thistle-down hair”. He wears an odd green. He does awful things to furnish his parties and parades with humans he finds charming.

I didn’t continue the streaming series, too dread-inducing! I was frightened when the bells would ring to announce the intrusion of the fairy. However, the characters were so interesting that I decided to try reading the book, and I love it! 


In Susanna Clarke's book, even though the effect of the fairy’s magic is so unsettling and the source of much despair, the fairy himself comes across less as having “evil” intent, and more as a selfish, unrestrained innocent, narcissistic the way I imagine fairies, and as they are commonly portrayed in literature.


For readers who avoid fantasy, or for readers who crave fantasy, this book wasn't really what you may expect. I read it as more literary, more allegory, more like, Pilgrim's Progress or Canterbury Tales? Like these, some chapters read like a digression wherein someone tells a story within the story.


As a reader and writer, I especially loved these themes and devices of the book:


  • In a Jane Austenesque or Dickensian way, there are so many funny social observations, memeable quotes, by the narrator, or mouthed by characters oblivious to the sense we are making of their words.


  • The women in the story are the intelligent, practical ones. They are the source of Strange’s ambition, and the objects of the fairy’s desire for them as playthings and ornaments. They are victims of magic. They strike me as captive muses for the men.


  • The magicians are like mad scientists of our own time, inventing means of using awesome powers in nature to alter the natural world and human relations.


  • I took the contrast between the academic magicians and the practicing magicians to be a commentary on critics vs. creators. 


  • I similarly read the contrast between Norrell and Strange as commentary on talent vs. training and effort, or maybe between gatekeepers and artists in the wild:

    • Mr Norrell assiduously studies his craft for ages;
    • he scoops up every book on magic for his own personal library and to prevent other’s access, to maintain his status as hierophant;
    • and limits his work to historic rules made by prior masters.
    • Jonathan Strange happens upon his natural gifts when casting about for something to do as a profession at his wife’s urging,
    • and his inherent talent makes him a greater magician.


  • Stephen Black, a servant, learns of his past as the nameless son of an enslaved woman. Will he vanquish the thistle-haired gentleman to become a new kind of king, who serves his subjects rather than his own whims? 

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is a magical work, and the book is better, (though I read that the author was on set in the making of the series). I look forward to reading the author’s second book, Piranesi, said to be very different from this one, and published in 2021. I understand the decades between debut and second novel are due to the author’s illness.


If you read it, do you agree with my understanding?


“It is the task of the Book to bear the words. Which I do. It is the task of the Reader to know what they say.”


Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (p. 836). Bloomsbury Publishing: 2004. Kindle Edition.