Cinderella of the Nile: One Story, Many Voices Series

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Although Adham was a good man, he found it wasn’t easy to live with a woman with so much emotional baggage. There are conflicting reports on why Narriman’s second marriage broke down. One of these is that she hadn’t left her taste for luxury behind and found it frustrating to live in a budget. But according to some sources, the real reason was much darker. Rhodopis' journey takes her from Greece to Egypt, where similarities with our more modern versions of Cinderella begin to please the reader; jealousy and goodness, slippers and invitations and a happy ending. Re-told by award winning and influential children’s author Beverley Naidoo, this version of Cinderella supports learning around traditional tales. With clear links to ancient Greece and ancient Egypt, children will discover how one story can have many iterations around the world and throughout history. Alongside historical themes, the book could be used as a platform for discussions around human rights, enslavement and justice. Links and themes: One question remains: Have Egyptians truly honored Narriman's tragic legacy? In 2010, her son, Akram Al Naqib, claimed they had not. He did admit, however, that there had been a recent interest in that era of history and stated that he hoped that would mean that Narriman would finally receive the recognition that she should have gotten during her lifetime. The pen and ink illustrations in my edition were by Ben Kutcher, born in Kiev around 1895 but whose family emigrated to the USA in 1902. My mother's grandparents had also emigrated from the Russian Empire but came to England. From there her parents made the colonial journey to Johannesburg where she was born... and where I would be born during the Second World War. Widening my vision

Farouk inherited his father’s title and throne at the young age of 16, mere months after he left the palace to study in England. Upon his father's passing, he returned to Egypt to fulfill his duties as king, but he had no experience of what that entailed, and no understanding of how to win his people’s hearts. Although Egyptians wanted to think kindly of Farouk, he began to lose favor once the people realized he only cared about himself and his own hedonistic lifestyle. Write a letter from Rhodipus to her parents telling them all that has happened to her including marrying the Pharaoh. Make a scroll Seeing her sing and dance to herself, Charaxos gifts Rhodopis a pair of delicate slippers for her feet, but one is stolen by the god Horus, in his form as a falcon. Horus drops the slipper in front of the Pharoah at his palace at Memphis, who takes it as a sign and decrees that the owner of the slipper must be found. In accordance with the familiar version of the tale, the Pharoah finds Rhodopis to be the owner of the slipper and marries her.Cinderella of the Nile by Beverley Naidoo, illustrated by Marjan Vafaeian is based on one of the earliest-known recorded versions of the famous Cinderella tale. Elements of this ‘Egyptian Cinderella’ legend were first written down more than 2000 years ago by the Greek historian Strabo and, before him, Herodotus. Many children will be familiar with Walt Disney’s animated film Cinderella, or even the popular version from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, but have they heard of the tale from Egypt? Our cross-curricular resource explores the ‘Cinderella of the Nile’ with activities on history, art, PSHE, drama and more! In this earliest known version of Cinderella, a rosy-cheeked girl called Rhodopis is captured in the mountains of Greece. She is sold in Samos, where wise storyteller Aesop befriends her. The tale begins with Rhodopis, the beautiful main character and the Cinderella of the story, being stolen from her home country to be transported away and sold as a slave. Rhodopis, being parted from her family, is left extremely unhappy. During this lonely time, she befriends the local animals and another slave, Aesop, who is well respected by the master because of his mesmerizing storytelling. However, Rhodopis does not remain there but is sold on because she is never seen smiling when in the presence of her master. Her new master seems to favour Rhodopis meaning she is granted privileges as well as gifted with a pair of divine red slippers, stirring jealousy amongst the other slaves. One day when she is washing clothes down at the Nile, Horus the Falcon-God swoops down and steals one of her slippers. The slipper is later dropped and falls into the hands of Pharaoh Amasis. He begins the search to locate the owner of this mysterious slipper as believes that Horus has given him a sign. Many women gather to try on the slipper but none of them are a suitable match. Rhodopis, discovered hiding behind a bush after setting free a trapped kingfisher, catches the pharaoh's attention and is given the chance to try on her shoe which fits perfectly. Pharaoh Amasis falls in love with Rhodopis' kindness as well as her beauty. Despite their difference in status, Rhodopis is made queen and begins her life with the pharaoh. As part of the "One Story, Many Voices" series, this version of the Cinderella story is based on an Egyptian tale, sympathetically illustrated by Marjan Vafaeian. Splendidly illustrated by award-winning Iranian artist Marjan Vafaeian, this is the first in Tiny Owl’s series One Story, Many Voices. I still have my childhood copy of the Blue Fairy Book with its ‘Cinderella and The Little Glass Slipper’. It’s the version with the fairy godmother and the pumpkin, first written in French by Charles Perrault in 1697. A small label inside the cover shows that it was bought for me at the ‘People’s Bookshop’ in Johannesburg, the city where I grew up. The book was published in London in 1949 and my copy must have travelled soon afterwards on a boat to South Africa.

This three-week Writing Root begins with the discovery of a bottle that contains a map and a message. After interrogating the scenario presented and writing a short news report using the present perfect tense, the children then share the first part of Cinderella of the Nile. They develop skills of inference before exploring the author’s use of literary language and the effect that this has on the reader. Suffix fixers are used to investigate abstract nouns which are then used to create an emotions graph before being woven in to a diary entry in role that also draws upon literary language from a previous session. Once the story has been read, the children sort statements about traditional Cinderella tales and statements about this version onto a Venn diagram and then go on to devise their own version of a Cinderella story complete with fable! Synopsis of Text Fahmi didn’t wait too long to pop the question to Narriman. Perhaps because she thought he was different, or maybe she was lonely and wanted companionship, whatever the reason, she didn’t wait too long to accept either. The couple married quietly, with only family present, in 1967. Thankfully, it appears that for Narriman, the third time was the charm.

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You can’t have a queenly past and not have stories to tell. Journalists and writers constantly hounded Narriman to share snippets from her past by writing her memoirs or agreeing to interviews. She remained firm until the end though and closed the door on all such offers. Except for one interview, recorded close to the time of her passing. I found myself staring at whitewashed bookshelves': Ruby Lovell on the importance of diverse reading Beverley Naidoo is the Carnegie award-winning author of many novels for children and young adults. Brought up during the apartheid years in South Africa, much of Beverley's writing reflects crossing boundaries and she has set her novels in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and the UK. Beverley's first novel, Journey to Jo'burg, was banned in South Africa until 1991 and has never been out of print in the UK since publication in 1985. It now appears in the Collins Modern Classics list at Harper Collins and is frequently used in schools. Narriman's dress was an absolute stand out—and for good reason. Seamstresses delicately sewed a stunning 20,000 diamonds sewn onto the fabric. And that wasn't all. It seems like Narriman couldn't decide whether she preferred diamonds or pearls—so she decided to have both. The queen wore an extravagant crown of pearls on her newly-royal head.

Look, it's easy to see that Narriman's engagement wasn't going well—but the events that led to it ending? No one could have predicted those. Like something out of a fairy tale, teenage Narriman somehow ensnared the freaking King of Egypt. According to King Farouk, someone showed him a picture of Narriman and he was immediately smitten, specifically with her "gentle" and "friendly" eyes.

50. Things Didn’t Go Her Way

Cinderella of the Nile is stunningly illustrated by Marjan Vafaeian, an artist working in Iran. How fascinating, I think, that the illustrator who first introduced me to Cinderella was born on one side of the Caucasus Mountains and now Marjan has worked her magic on the other! You can’t blame a 16-year-old for being attracted to tall, dark, and handsome men rather than nerdy doctors—and Narriman was no different. She didn’t find her new beau attractive, specifically shading him for being short. In a salty dig, she referred to her betrothed as the “small Zaki Hashim” and compared him unfavorably to a “small school teacher.” However, there might have been another, more reasonable motive for her