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nancy@nancykeane.com
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Fletcher, Susan
SHADOW SPINNER
New York : Atheneum Books
for Young Readers, 1998.
IL 5-8, RL 5.5
ISBN 0689818521
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| Everyone
knows the story – how the Sultan discovered his first wife with another
man. He was so angry he killed her – as well as all her servants and slaves
– every grown woman in the harem except for his own mother. Then the Sultan
vowed that no woman would ever betray him again. His solution? Each night
he would marry a woman, and then in the morning he would kill her. This
went on for far too long – until the night that a woman named Shahrazad
married the Sultan. She asked him if she could tell one last story to her
little sister before dawn, before her death. The Sultan agreed. He listened
as she told the little girl the tale. Shahrazad stopped in the middle of
an exciting part of the story, just as the sun was rising. The Sultan wanted
to hear what happened next, so he let her live until the next night so
he could hear the end of the story. On the second night it happened again.
And again the Sultan let her live. This has been going on now for over
two years. Sharazad still lives and in the meantime she has born the Sultan
three sons.
But now the unthinkable has
happened. Shahraazad is running out of stories. When Marjan visits the
harem one day, she is overheard telling a story that Shahrazad has never
heard before. The Sultan is put off for another night. But he wants to
know the end of the story – and Marjan doesn’t know it.
Can Marjan save Shahrazad?
Her quest to complete the story and save her queen takes her on a forbidden
journey outside of the harem walls and into a world of mystery and danger.
(Susan Dunn, Colorado
Blue Spruce YA Book Award, 2003) |
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SUBJECTS:
Scheherazade (Legendary character) -- Fiction.
Storytellers -- Fiction.
People with disabilities -- Fiction.
Interpersonal relations -- Fiction.
Iran -- Fiction. |
© 
Permission is granted for the
noncommercial duplication and use of this resource, provided it is substantially
unchanged from its present form and appropriate credit is given.
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