This is the twenty-eighth of thirty-one readers used in the Veritas Press Phonics Museum program, designed for first grade.
Sample Section:
He sat upon his throne of wood, while before him a ragged shepherd stood.
"Shoo, shoo" he wanted to say, to make that Moses go away.
But that prophet cawed like a crow, "Thus says the Lord, 'Let My people go.'"Story Background:
The style of the illustrations in this story mimics the Egyptian style called frontalism. In reliefs or paintings, frontalism means that the head of the character is always drawn in profile, while the body is seen from the front. Although the face is to the side, the eye is drawn in full. The legs are turned to the same side as the head, with one foot placed in front of the other and nothing in front of the face or body of the pharaoh. Every figure, in paintings or sculptures, stands or sits with a formal, stiff, and rigid posture. Proportions in this style of art are not dictated by perspective or nature buy by hierarchy. The most important people are represented largest and those lower on the social scale are smaller.
This retelling of the Exodus is from the pharaoh's perspective, so Moses becomes the "villain." The profusion of gory elements including rivers of blood, plagues of flies and the death of the first born make it the kind of story Edgar Allan Poe would be expected to write, so this version of God's deliverance of His people lifts Poe elements in tribute by borrowing heavily from Quothe the Raven.
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