Book review: The Gypsy Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

The fifth book I read in 2017 was the sequel to a book I read and loved as a child, The Egypt Game.  The Gypsy Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder was published thirty years after The Egypt Game, and had the world changed big time in the meanwhile!

For the kids in the story, however, 1967 has blended into 1997 with nary a hiccup.  The story picks up where it left off, with April asking Melanie about gypsies.  Gypsies are a very different subject matter than they were in 1967, however, so the story quickly segues into discrimination and death camps and homelessness and the general injustice of Western society.  As a matter of fact, they never play the titular game at all, despite the author's dedication "[t]o everyone who asked for another game with the same players."  It was a little early for the term "cultural appropriation," but playing another culture was already off-limits in polite society, a la the Maui Halloween costume.

Another twenty years on, and Snyder doesn't even get credit for being primly woke, despite her wildly racially diverse cast of characters, as the very term "gypsy" is considered a racial slur in the progressivest circles.  As with Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Mocassin Trail, ancient Egypt is still considered fair game for imagination, but Native American and Roma cultures have become a third rail.  This book is mostly depressing in its demonstration how restrictive popular culture has grown.