Lights on the Nile

by Donna Jo Napoli

Overview

Kepi is a young girl in ancient Egypt, content to stay home with her family, helping her father, who was wounded in the construction of a pyramid for the cruel pharaoh Khufu. But that was before she and her pet baboon, Babu, were kidnapped and held captive on a boat bound for the capital city, Ineb Hedj. And when Kepi and Babu are separated, she knows she has only one choice: to make her way to the capital on her own, rescue Babu, and find a way to appeal to the pharaoh. Khufu is rich and powerful, but Kepi has her own powers, deep inside her—ones she herself doesn’t even know about yet.

Donna Jo Napoli, acclaimed author of Zel and Beast, revisits the fabled origin of fairies in this strikingly orig-inal and affecting novel of friendship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062093363
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/17/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	293
Sales rank:	1,011,847
Lexile:	580L (what's this?)
File size:	8 MB
Age Range:	1 - 12 Years

About the Author

Donna Jo Napoli is the author of more than fifty books for children, including many picture books and novels for tweens and teens. Some of her most popular books are Zel, Beast, Ugly, Bound, and Stones in Water. Donna Jo lives in Pennsylvania with her family.

Editorial Reviews

Living in ancient Egypt around 2530 B.C.E., 10-year-old Kepi inhabits a world very aware of the presence and power of gods and spirits. Her father is wounded while helping build a pyramid for the cruel Pharaoh Khufu, putting their family under financial stress. While collecting fruit Kepi is duped and kidnapped, along with her pet baboon, Babu, by a man who wants to travel north to the capital city of Ineb Hedj and sell Babu to the pharaoh. Strong-willed and wily, Kepi refuses to be separated from Babu during the turbulent journey, praying to the gods for protection and forming her own agenda: to confront the pharaoh about his neglect of his people. Napoli (The Wager) crafts a mystical coming-of-age tale and a love letter of sorts to Egypt, saturated with proverbs, intriguing details of everyday life at the time, and rich descriptions of the places Kepi visits (“The mornings were all misty green, as though someone had woven the finest cloth of fresh leaves and draped it over the world”). Kepi’s survival skills and perspective are challenged in this absorbing adventure. Ages 8–12. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Gr 4–8—Kepi is a spirited young ancient Egyptian girl with a powerful connection to animals, from the click beetle she discovers in her family's fields to the baby baboon she finds and raises. When some boys try to steal Babu, Kepi runs far from home in pursuit of her pet and falls prey to Menes, a man whose motives for helping her are unsettlingly ambiguous. Menes drugs her with poppy seedpods and transports her up the Nile to be a baboon trainer in a temple in Ineb Hedj, the capital of Egypt. Kepi's adventures make for fascinating reading, and Napoli smoothly integrates details about the landscape, political structure, religion, and daily life. Readers' hearts will be in their mouths as Kepi survives a sandstorm, reaches the capital, is forced into servitude, and confronts the Pharoah himself. That's where the story begins to feel as if it's barreling toward a too-hasty conclusion. And when Kepi and her new friends are transformed into feri, it seems mostly as if this sketchy explanation of the origin of fairies is Napoli's device to get Kepi back home.—Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NY

School Library Journal

Kepi's name means "tempest," and it suits, in this tale that purports to reveal the origins of fairies.

In 2530 B.C.E. Egypt, as the young daughter of a miller, her impetuousness lands her and her pet baboon captive on a boat sailing north on the Nile. As the journey progresses, plans to escape her kidnapper evolve into a quest to speak to the Pharaoh in the capital city, Ineb Hedj, to complain about his unfairness to his people. Kepi's spiritedness only seems to grow as she gets farther from her family, and the narrative progression may strike readers as unusual as her character only intensifies, rather than showing signs of change.The final, brief climax fulfills the arc—or rather, arrow—as Kepi and the companions she's gathered are transformed by the goddess Hathor into the world's first fairies.Napoli's text is full of detail of setting and culture that should enthrall young fans of historical fiction, though its resolution may leave them confounded. Conversely, readers who come to the story expecting fairy fantasy will be disappointed.

Nevertheless, the story offers rich fare for those precocious younger readers who can't get enough; with luck they will accommodate any confusion and may move onto some of Napoli's more polished works, a little later on.(author's note, glossary) (Historical fantasy. 8-11)

Kirkus Reviews