The Mummy by well-respected Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley is an oversized, quite affordable paperback stuffed with color photos and very readable information about mummies from Egypt (and from the world of publishing and movies). Tyldesley, like a great teacher, knows the material so well that she can share it with her students with ease and make it come alive (well, almost).

Although there is nothing ground-breaking in this book (no mummies from the Valley of the Golden Mummies, for example), what makes this book worth reading is the level of detail (perhaps I should say, "little stories") that Tyldesley includes as examples. Whatever information she gives, she always follows up with fascinating examples that help the reader visualize the information. Particularly interesting are the "little facts"--such as what happened to all of the waste material for a body that was being turned into a mummy. My favorite chapter is the one that concerns what happened to the pharaohs' mummies --filled with stories and little facts. 

She also includes a lengthy chapter on mummy curses which pretty neatly covers the subject from King Tut to the Titanic Mummy, as well as a final chapter on Unwrapping the Mummy--which discusses mummy abuses and present-day mummy science.

The photos make it an excellent reference book for older children (grades 5+) and for adults (the text is extremely well-written).