The (Mostly) True Story of Cleopatra's Needle

March 18, 2024
Employing even keeled pacing and distinctively rendered characters, Gutman (the My Weird School series) chronicles how Cleopatra’s Needle became a New York City landmark in this delightfully fact-ional blend of history and adventure. In an introduction, the novel’s unnamed contemporary narrator ventures through Central Park with their mother and younger sister. Upon arriving at their destination—the eponymous obelisk—their mother, “who makes her living as a storyteller,” regales her children with the history of the monument. Via varying POVs—including that of an Egyptian boy in 1460 BCE, a female inventor in 1880s N.Y.C., and others—Mom explains how Cleopatra’s Needle was commissioned by Pharaoh Thutmosis III in the granite pits of Aswan, Egypt, which she gleans from the hieroglyphics etched into the structure, and its subsequent removal from the country. Each successive event in the obelisk’s history is rendered with keen attention to sociopolitical details, including housing insecurity and child enslavement. These weighty topics are counterbalanced by the protagonists’ diary-style narrations, which ground this sweeping introduction to the lesser-known history of an iconic monolith. Ages 8–12.

April 15, 2024
An unnamed boy could be watching the ball game but instead must sit in Central Park, listening to his professional storyteller mom spout facts about Cleopatra's Needle. To pique his curiosity, Mom invents diary excerpts from five fictitious children whose lives intersected with the obelisk's creation and journey. First, Zosar Zuberi, an enslaved Syrian boy in Aswan, Egypt, in 1461-1460 BCE, writes about the grueling labor required to cut the obelisk from a piece of granite. In Heliopolis in 1459 BCE, Lateef Jabari's artistic dreams are realized when the pharaoh praises his drawings of the hieroglyphs for the obelisk. Fast-forward to 1879-1880: The obelisk has moved to Alexandria, and Panya Hassan, a 14-year-old girl, details the controversy and logistics of its transfer to America: "If foreigners want treasures so badly, they should create their own." Thomas Brighton is an English boy who ran away from a troubled home; he stows away on the ship transporting the obelisk to New York. Finally, young inventor Rebecca Watson conveys the excitement and challenges of its installation in Central Park. Between the diary segments, the contemporary boy's first-person narration resumes, successfully smoothing the transitions. Readers will be drawn into the mystery of why and how an ancient Egyptian artifact stands in Central Park; they'll marvel at the feats of engineering and learn tidbits of history through the clear, detailed text and plentiful photos and illustrations. Vividly and accessibly resuscitates an ancient monument's forgotten history. (photo credits, historical note) (Fiction. 9-12)

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May 15, 2024
Grades 3-6 "Everything in this book is true," Gutman writes, "except for the stuff I made up,"" by which he means the five young narrators from different eras who follow the travels of the titular granite obelisk from its creation in Egypt 3,500 years ago to its current home in New York City. The last part of its journey is presented in the most detail, first by a young resident of nineteenth-century Alexandria outraged at the loss of her cultural heritage, then by a British stowaway aboard the ship that carried the 220-ton obelisk across the Atlantic in 1880, and finally by a giddy New Yorker who follows the artifact to its erection in Central Park. Readers curious about the obelisk's hieroglyphics will have to seek elsewhere, but the descriptions of the technical challenges of transporting such a huge block in both ancient and modern times are enhanced by drawings that give way to period photos and engravings. The author adds a tribute to the difficult enterprise's unsung supervisor, Henry Gorringe. A long-needed introduction to the city's oldest outdoor monument.

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