His Majesty, Queen Hatshepsut

Hatshepsut, whom readers first meet as a teenager, barely endures the indignities of being an Egyptian princess. She detests having creams rubbed onto her face and feet and learning to read and write. Later she has to rule as a widowed queen-regent until her late husband's son can become king; but Hatshepsut dares to presume that she is to be the next pharaoh. She seizes power and spends the next several years ruling her people and defending her right to the title. In a wry narrative voice that engages the reader completely, Carter has given this distant forerunner of feminist ""can-do'' a life-size dimension and a fact-based reality. The years of being a princess up to Hatshepsut's coronation are exquisite fun; the locale is exotic and the era bygone, but she shares the concerns of most adolescents. The story lags slightly at times, perhaps because Hatshepsut is an adult for the greater part of the book, with concerns that aren't as immediately appealing as her youth and ascendancy to the throne. But this remains thought-provoking fare. Ages 10-up. (September)