By Shirley Climo
The Cinderella story you already know, retold as a real Egyptian tale, a Greek servant girl, a rose-red slipper, and a falcon in place of a fairy godmother.
Rhodopis is a Greek girl who was stolen from home and sold into service in Egypt, where the other servant girls tease her for her fair skin and pile the hardest chores on her. Her one treasure is a pair of rose-red slippers. When a falcon, the god Horus, swoops down and carries one slipper away, it lands in the lap of the Pharaoh Amasis, who searches the whole length of the Nile to find its owner and makes Rhodopis his queen. Shirley Climo built it from a story a Greek historian wrote down more than two thousand years ago, so it is a Cinderella that is also, in its bones, ancient, and Ruth Heller's lush, jewel-bright illustrations make every page glow.
For the Egypt-obsessed child who also loves a fairy tale, this ties the two loves together, a Cinderella they recognize instantly, set among real pharaohs and Egyptian gods and drawn from a truly old story. It rewards being read aloud, and Ruth Heller's illustrations are gorgeous enough to hold a child who is really there for the pictures.