The City of Rainbows: A Tale from Ancient Sumer

You'll be proud to be caught with this elegant little black book peeking out of your backpack! In this ancient Sumerian story, preserved for millennia on clay tablets and now available in kid-friendly paperback, two kings claim two different cities are favored by the goddess Inanna. Enemy sorcerers wage a battle of magic to find out which king is right. After you read the story through, flip to a section in the back that walks you through the story again, this time pointing out important cultural facts - how the City of Rainbows got its name, how the sorcerers predicted the future, what animals had to do with the gods. I won't give it away, but one cultural fact changes the meaning of the story entirely - you'll be itching to go back and read it all over again. Elizabeth Himmelfarb in Dig Magazine, November 2000 (Illustrated throughout in color).