Based the description, the cover, and the first few pages it seemed like it would be a really exciting book. Instead it turn out to have a lot of holes and lucky coincidences. Senmut accidentally kills a dove, which is punishable by death in ancient Egypt. The only witness is a village elder. I found it frustrating that they couldn't simply bury the bird somewhere and not mention it to anyone. The idea was good I just though the book could have been a lot better.

By the way, this was a brand new book from Amazon and one of the pages was ripped.

I bought this book as a read aloud for my reading class. As one previous reviewer mentioned, the names did give a bit of trouble. For my kids, however, low level almost non-readers, the story was good as a read aloud. By the end of the book, the students were able to tell me the who what when where why and hows of the story, if not the actual names. It is interesting to note, that as I read the story to my students, I was amazed at the religious underpinings. With what has been said recently about The Golden Compass (see my review) nothing has been said about this book which celebrates Egyptian polytheism. Of course, I am being facetious. This just goes to show that any book that deals with a non-Christian religion can be charged with expousing an anti-Christian message. The goddess in the book is seen as all powerful and worthy of devotion. Funny how critics pick and choose what to rile over. Perhaps if they just look at the basic story, in this case the love of a boy for his ill father, any critic will see a wonderful story of devotion, not to an ancient god but to one boy's family.