The Gypsy Game was much darker than its predecessor novel The Egypt Game. There was no game here, just a superficial examination of homelessness and the plight of minorities. The subject matter seems very deep for the young readers who will read this as a follow-up to The Egypt Game. I did enjoy the very beginning of the book, as Snyder jumps right in at practically the exact moment when the earlier book ended. I mean that literally, and I have to say that it was kind of a thrill to realize that...

I didn't like this one as much as I liked The Egypt Game. It's much less "game" and much more a story about what happens to Toby. I wouldn't want it to be the same book, but it felt to me a little like the game bit could have played more of a role in the story.

"When Toby Alvillar said he was a Gypsy, Melanie didn't know what to think. She knew what April was thinking because April said so, loud and clear. Which was that Toby was just shooting off his mouth and trying to get attention, like always." (PG. 19, Ch. 4)The story was fine as a story of friendship and I loved that the characters were diverse. BUT there was no game playing. I was looking forward to the kid games. The Egypt Game had great reviews so I figured this was similar because it is the

I love the Egypt Game and I was amazed when after 15 plus years of rereading it, there has been a sequel all this time. I was VERY disappointed.Things that irritated me:-The characters went from being in the 1960s to the 1990s - the dialogue and word choices of the characters were complete different.-Toby clearly states in the first book that his parents are out at a party - pretty hard to do since according to this sequel, his mother has been dead since he was a baby.-The characters all of the

This book feels like a Disney live-action remake, only worse

Not nearly as good as it's predeccessor. The Gypsy Game lacks ingenuity, mystery, enchantment, character development, relationships and all those wonderful things about the first one. A tolerable read, but disappointing.

Seems like the title just hangs on the coattails of The Egypt Game as the story isn't focused on the game this time around. It's really quite a different book, and I wonder if it could have been done with all new characters. You have to wonder about the huge gap between the publication of the books. Did the author got so much pressure to write a sequel that she just finally gave in and did this? It's an OK book, but maybe not such a worthy sequel.

I expect superlative children's fiction from Ms. Snyder, but this one was just okay. Maybe I'm too old for these "games"? I remember being entranced by The Egypt Game.

I was tricked into thinking this would be like The Egypt Game and involve suspenseful, unexplainable events... instead it was just a story. I wanted to relive a bit of the supernatural thrill ZKS's books gave me when I read them as a child, but there wasn't any of that. Oh, well.

I was a little disapointed with this book. It was obviously written long after the first book so some of the language had changed (the same language that had make the first one a little outdated) but there were also some subtle modernization. The first book was obviously set in time it was written so to have the book go from the 1960's to the 1990's was a little unsettling especially since I read them back to back. Most children may not pick up on these things but as an adult reader it was a lit...

Actually the story is not as grim as the review title implies, but one is reminded of the song, "Gypsies, tramps and thieves."Anyway, soon afer the Egypt Game has concluded the multi-ethnic gang is back, but things are deteriorating in Toby's home and soon he goes missing. Say, was he just pulling the kids' legs about his Gypsy ancestry or is he really in danger of being kidnapped? I felt the author was pulling one over on us; besides the use of chapter flip-flop, she filled out a skimpy plot wi...

I found this book on a random hotel bookshelf -- what a nice treat. This is a worthy companion to The Egypt Game, which was published around 30 years prior to this one. The Gypsy Game features the same young characters seeking to roleplay as a different ethnic group, in the way that children do. Even though "cultural appropriation" was not a widely used term in the 90s, this book grapples with that. What does it mean to "play" as a group that has been historically discriminated against and oppre...

This review also appears on my blog, Read-at-Home Mom.Now that they have permission to play the Egypt Game, it doesn’t seem as interesting to sixth graders April and Melanie. After some consideration, they decide it might be more exciting to shift their focus to gypsies instead. The trouble is, before the Gypsy Game can truly get underway, real-world problems intervene. Toby, one of the Egyptians, has run away, supposedly to avoid being kidnapped by his gypsy grandparents. April, Melanie, and th...

This is the sequel to the incomparable "Egypt Game" by the same author, in which a diverse gang of kids recreates its own version of ancient Egypt in an empty lot. My daughter and I listened to it recently on audio and she was so taken with it that she begged me to get the sequel, which isn't available on audio for good reason. In this one, they switch to the subject of gypsies and it turns out that one of the kids is part gypsy. He runs away from home and stays in the lot with a giant dog. The

The first book "Egypt Game," was incredible. The details where more to the point, and exact. Something that made you want to read more. Sadly this book i can't compare with it. I really hope to like this book, but it didn't attract me as much. Recommend this not to everyone. Since the ending for me was to weak. And the plot lack mystery.

Kids need to be reading more of Zil's books and less Hairy Snotter. She has been writing meaningful, entertaining books for over 40 years.

It's hard to follow up something as awesome as The Egypt Game, and to a certain extent, Ms Snyder doesn't try to copy the formula that made that book so well-cherished (by myself, at least.) She does take the familiar characters and put them in a situation that sort of evolves naturally from April's final suggestion in TEG, and while it's good, solid story-telling, the magic of the previous book is missing. The story is still fairly compelling, but I think what this book mostly lacks is the char...

I didn't like this one nearly as much as The Egypt Game. It felt like the issues were too adult for kids this age. I mean, I know there are homeless kids out there. But they all seemed to handle this surprisingly well. And then at the end to come up with this new solution to turn the Gypsy Game into something else - I don't buy it. It's awful preachy.

Having read The Egypt Game in fifth grade, I was excited to read the sequel, and utterly disappointed. Decently written with a plot that occasionally manages to be engaging, but it never fully moves into the realm of the believable, or out of the (admittedly enormous) shadow of its predecessor.

The gypsy game was a good book, but it sort of dissapointed me a little. I expected it to be better than The Egypt Game but it wasn't in my opinion. It did continue the adventures of the Egypt Game when the kids created a new game, but it wasn't like anything that I had expected.