TEN LITTLE MUMMIES

“ ‘This is the pits!’ / said a mummy one day, / ‘I am bored stiff— / let’s go outside and PLAY!’ ” Ten little mummies venture out of their “dreary old tomb” for a day of heatstroke, sudden winds, and encounters with various predators, all of which whittle their number down one by one. Giving his square-headed, tightly wrapped mummies free limbs, as well as expressive eye and mouth holes, Karas sends them cavorting past dunes and palm trees, sliding down a pyramid and splashing into the Nile. The last, lonely mummy returns to the tomb that night, to find the others awaiting her: “SURPRISE!” Though the clever wordplay vanishes after the opening verses, and aside from a scattering of “Ancient Egyptian Facts” on the endpapers, the setting is by and large generic, mummies are at least as much fun to count as the ghosts, pumpkins, and monsters in other Halloween variations on the old rhyme. And the misadventures here will draw chortles from young readers. (Picture book. 6-8)