The (Mostly) True Story of Cleopatra's Needle

When a kid is dragged to Central Park in New York on a Saturday (when he could be at home watching the ball game), the last thing he wants is a history lesson from his mom. But then his mother starts telling him a story. A story about the giant structure sitting in right in front of them—Cleopatra’s Needle. It turns out that an enslaved boy and hundreds of other people spent more than six hundred days carving the Needle out of stone and pulling it upright. And another kid’s drawings were used to create the hieroglyphs on its sides. And a girl tried sabotage to keep the Needle from leaving its home in Egypt—sabotage that nearly worked. And a boy stowed away on the trip the Needle took across the Atlantic Ocean—and when the ship nearly sank, it was the boy who saved everyone on board. And when the Needle finally made it to New York City, it became a sensation … but almost got stuck just a few miles from its destination. This thrilling story is told through the eyes of five kids who were