In this debut middle-grade novel, young siblings from the 21st century are mysteriously transported to ancient Egypt, where they find friendship and danger as they search for a way home.John isn't looking forward to summer vacation on his last day in the fourth grade. His family will be moving from Colorado to Maryland for his dad's job. Unlike his big sister, Sarah, who is excited about the change, John is sure that he'll be unhappy and friendless there. During one last mountain hike, the siblings stumble on a strange cave where a hieroglyph of an eye transports them to ancient Egypt. They meet Zachariah, a "brown-skinned boy, barefoot and bare chested, wearing a white kilt-like wrapping," and find they are able to speak his language. The son of Imhotep, the king's pyramid architect, Zack, as John and Sarah call him, invites the pair home. (The siblings tell the family they are shipwrecked refugees from a distant land.) Gartner seamlessly mixes history with fantasy in his well-crafted tale, integrating into the plot facts about pyramid engineering, gods and goddesses, housing, and food (the book includes a recipe for an ancient Egyptian dish). With emotional authenticity, Sarah's ready acceptance of the adventure gives way to empathy for her younger brother's homesickness and her own fears and doubts. John responds to their experience with disbelief, cautious acceptance, a desire to return to his own time, and analytic fascination-the stars in the Egyptian night sky are so abundant and bright, he reasons, because there's no pollution. Respect for readers shows, too, in the author's expressive language: "A lazy cloud" reclines against a lofty mountain pinnacle, "waiting for the sunset show"; Imhotep offers resonant assurance that friendships form with "shared experience and time." And, after providing vivid encounters with scorpions, a tomb robber, a cobra, and a Nile crocodile, Gartner surprises readers with multiple plot twists having to do with an unsavory time traveler; concerns that the eye transport device could change history; news of a bizarre, anachronistic archaeological find; and a fun little kicker for an epilogue.An engaging, eventful, history-based fantasy with realistic protagonists and an enjoyable, twist-filled plot.