I have mixed feelings about this book. I read it and loved it as a child, without any thought about how the story sat in a wider cultural context. The art is heavily stylized. Human figures almost always appear in a familiar Ancient Egyptian profile, but the animals and plants seem possibly more influenced by traditional Chinese painting. The story itself is about a blond-haired, green-eyed girl who was captured as a slave from Greece and taken to Egypt. There she is insulted and abused by her fellow servants. When the Pharaoh throws a ball, the three other serving girls of the house get to go, but the slave girl must stay behind. A hawk steals one of her dainty slippers and drops it in the Pharaoh's lap, and he begins a search to find the girl who fits the slipper, determined to marry her. As an adult reader, I found myself skeptically raising my eyebrows when the Pharaoh did indeed choose to marry a former slave, the one white girl present in the whole book. This book was published in 1989, and I wonder if it would have been published today. But the biggest surprise was the author's note at the back, stating that this story has at least some basis in historical fact- the Pharaoh Amasis (Dynasty XXVI, 570-526 BCE) did indeed marry a Greek slave named Rhodopis. This story was first recorded by the Greek geographer Strabo in 64 or 63 BCE, and this tale might be the earliest ancestor of the Cinderella tale we are more familiar with today.