Diary of Dorkius Maximus – In Egypt

Tim Collins's Diary of Dorkius Maximus In Egypt is a very silly Roman diary for 9 year olds about a boy sent to make friends with a pharaoh.

What happens

Dorkius wants to be a noble Roman hero. He is not off to a good start.

Julius Caesar has picked him for a trip to Alexandria. Egypt owes Rome a great deal of money, Ptolemy the pharaoh is Dorkius's own age, and Caesar reckons a boy might get further than a general would.

Then Dorkius gets on the boat. He's sick on the deck. He's sick on Caesar. He volunteers as a rower and brings the entire ship to a stop.

Ptolemy turns out to be the worst sort of boy with absolute power. He calls Caesar Old Baldy to his face. He shows Dorkius a hook for pulling brains out through the nose and explains exactly what it's used for. And when Dorkius finally gets to deliver his brilliant speech, the pharaoh agrees to everything, then asks him to kneel to make it official, and asks Linos to pull his finger.

Linos is the best thing in the book. He's the family slave, brought along to carry the bucket, and he quietly wins every board game, calms every camel and spots every useful thing Dorkius walks straight past. Dorkius never notices. Your reader will, and that's most of the fun.

The rest is sick, sacred chickens, camel spit and mummification jokes, written as short dated entries with the odd caption for a drawing along the way. Perfect for a child who reads two pages, snorts, and then reads them out to you whether you want them or not.

Two things worth flagging. The comedy stops dead for one scene in the desert, where a man is stabbed in the heart in front of Dorkius and dies coughing blood. It arrives with no warning at all in a book this daft, and it's over quickly, but a child not expecting it will be jolted.

And Dorkius owns Linos. He talks about him as property, his father compares the boys' value out loud, and the book plays a fair bit of it for laughs. That's Rome, and Linos gets the last word every time, but it's worth being ready for the question.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, the first Dorkius Maximus diary is in the library too. His dad hands him a blank scroll, his brother's hand-me-down armour knocks him over backwards, and he hasn't been anywhere near Egypt yet.