Review: Lights on the Nile by Donna Jo Napoli

Review: Lights on the Nile

Lights on the Nile

By Donna Jo Napoli

I just finished reading Donna Jo Napoli's book Zel, which I enjoyed but did not find appropriate for the 9-12 year old audience it is marketed to. Lights on the Nile certainly seemed much tamer at first but it had some mature elements that I will list below.

In this story, a young ten-year old girl named Kepi travels up the Nile in search of her stolen pet baboon and for a chance to speak to the pharaoh. The story allows you to feel what it might have been like to be part of the working-class in Ancient Egypt, circa 2530 BCE. Napoli has certainly done her research, which makes the details come off as both very real, and slightly frightening:

-Kepi travels through a refuse pile and comes across a withered human hand
-After a vicious sandstorm, the body of a woman floats by Kepi on the river

Kepi, alone and vulnerable, is forced to fend off bandits, kidnappers, and ill-doers, which shows her incredible integrity and courage. Her difficulties also reveal the source of her secret strength: Kepi is a very pious young girl and is constantly praying to her Egyptian gods who appear to be listening and helping. As she travels up the Nile, the gods come in the forms of beetles, ibises, crocodiles, and hippopotamuses to fend off trouble, even if it means that sometimes these protective animals kill her would-be antagonists.

My Opinion:

Kepi is a wonderful heroine, full of spunk, personality, wit, courage, and humility.

The story is a real page-turner and Napoli's writing style is engaging and active, and she leaves readers with great cliff-hangers at the end of every chapter.

Unfortunately the ending threw out the best parts of the story. Kepi has waited months and gone through excruciating trials to finally encounter the pharaoh and plead with him for justice for middle-class workers. She begs him that workers like her father should be given compensation for injuries attained from working on the pyramids. We do not learn the consequence of this encounter (and neither does Kepi get her baboon back); instead, the goddess Hathor jumps in to offer Kepi two alternative endings: the first, to return home to her family; and the second, to become a feri (fairy) and be a personal helper to the goddess. She chooses to become a fairy. All the intricate and beautiful workings of plot that depict working-class life go completely out the window as Kepi takes the opportunity to ditch her old life and claim a higher status with the goddess. Her role in life now is to offer consolation in the form of tinkling bells to the ailing pyramid workers, not to mention her family in mourning over her supposed death.

Age Appropriateness:

Like Zel, there are some more mature elements to this story that make it hard to place the book into a single age category.

Since the heroine is 10 years old, she should appeal to girls around 9-11; however, incidences of characters getting drunk and stark depictions of death (mentioned above), would put the book in the more mature category of 12-13 year old's.

The author takes a very historically-accurate stance to life in Ancient Egypt and describes how Kepi's older sister is eager to get married at 12. Therefore, the fact that Kepi is 10 does actually not tell us modern readers anything about the age-appropriateness of this novel. The same can be said of the young heroine in Zel, who is eager to be married at 14, and has a child out of wedlock at 16.