Book Review: Sphinx's Princess by Esther Friesner

Sphinx's Princess
by Esther Friesner
Non-series

Random House Books for Young Readers
ISBN-10: 0-375-85654-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-375-85654-9
Publication Date: September, 2009
List Price: $17.99

Review: Passion, love, and music, Esther Friesner the author of Sphinx’s Princess did an impressive job writing this book. She really brought out the characters and the events. In Sphinx’s Princess, Nefertiti is a princess in Egypt with passion for dancing and writing.

Nefertiti was born, and her mother died during labor. Every night for four years Nefertiti has these horrible nightmares about a sphinx, a sphinx is a god of Egypt with a lion’s body. Nefertiti and her father went to a festival one day and there she saw a group of beautiful young women dancing to praise their god, and she loved it! That month, Nefertiti’s father married one of their maids. Together, they had a child named Mutnodjmet, but they called her Bit-Bit. When Nefertiti was five years old, her father’s friend, Henenu was teaching her to become a scribe. Nobody else knew about the lessons and when her father found out about them he was furious because her mother was also a scribe. Nefertiti’s aunt, the queen had taken advantage of Nefertiti’s mother and her power. Nefertiti’s father didn’t want it to happen to Nefertiti. Nefertiti loved to sing and dance for the sphinx almost as much as she loved to write. How will Nefertiti become Sphinx’s princess?

I personally loved this book; it is full of passion and love. Nefertiti loves to dance and sing but she also appreciates writing. Not many girls back then were scribes. She really tried her hardest to learn all the symbols of their writing. If your hobby is to sing and dance this is the book for you. It really made me feel like I was in Egypt with Nefertiti because it gave great details. For instance, the book said “running across the red land where nothing grew but stones and bones.” Plus, Nefertiti is always following her heart and that can be very inspiring. I would give this book a four and a half star rating out of five. I lowered the rating only because the vocabulary is really hard to understand. For example, it uses a word like Amenhotep’s and if you don’t have a background about Egypt you might not understand what that means. Due to the vocabulary; I would say this book is for kids eleven years and up. Esther is well known for writing thirty other novels and one hundred fifty short stories. A few of the novels she wrote are My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding, Nobody’s Princess, and Nobody’s Prize. One of her short stories is Thunderbolt. She did a great job of making me want to read more of her stories. Sphinx’s Princess is one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time.

Review written by Sara (6th grade student).

We would like to thank Random House for providing a copy of Sphinx's Princess for this review.

Have you read Sphinx's Princess? How would you rate it?