What question does Ken ask the oracle in The Egypt Game?
When the Egypt gang gets the idea for the Oracle of Thoth, there's a bit of competition between April and Toby regarding how the process will work. Toby's plan is selected by the children as the best way to go about it. According to his plan, a question for the oracle will be hand-written and placed in the beak of Thoth (the stuffed owl) without anyone else seeing it. The children will leave without finding out what the question was; the next day, they will see if Thoth has delivered an answer. The lot falls to Ken to ask the first question, which is ironic, because he is the one who is the least interested in the game and the oracle. However, he comes up with a question and leaves it in the owl's beak overnight. When the children assemble the next day, April acts as high priestess. She reads...
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Ken's question, "Will I be a big league star someday?" Surprisingly, when she turns the paper over, an answer has been scrawled on the back. The answer is, "Man is his own star, and that soul who can be honest, is the only perfect man." The children are astounded and mystified as to how the answer came to be there. Later, Toby reveals that he sneaked back to Egypt overnight and wrote the answer--which he had found in a book of familiar quotations.
In The Egypt Game, how do the Egyptians react to the oracle's answer to Ken's question?
Ken has written a question for Thoth the oracle to answer. The question has been placed on the owl's beak overnight, and the kids aim to come back the next day to see if it's been answered.
Toby comes up with the bright idea that all the kids should arrive in the yard at the same time so that no one can tamper with the question. The whole purpose of the exercise is that Thoth should answer the question, and that purpose would clearly be defeated if someone messed around with the question and provided their own answer instead.
Once the kids are altogether in the yard, April, in her capacity as high priestess, removes the question from Thoth's beak and beings reading the answer to it. She's not very impressed; it seems that someone been messing around with the question, exactly what the kids didn't want to happen. Ken had asked whether he would be a big league star someday, to which the answer is
Man is his own star, and that soul who can be honest, is the only perfect man.
April is furious because she thinks that Ken actually wrote the answer himself. Ken is adamant that he didn't. April then starts pointing the finger of blame at Toby, who's equally insistent that he had nothing to with it. Before long, a massive argument has broken out among the group, with all kinds of accusations flying around.