Friday 14 August 2015

Africa is My Home - Book Review




Monica Edinger
Africa is My Home – A Child of the Amistad
Candlewick Press, 2015
Paperback
61pp £6.99 ISBN 978-0-7636-7647-6

Home is where the heart is and it doesn’t matter how far away you go if the heart doesn’t follow. There was a time in human history when some never had that choice whether to leave or go and ‘Africa is My Home’ brings us back to that dark period through the eyes of a child.

Nine year old Margru was forced to leave everything she’d ever known of lush green Africa and travel great distances in chains and shackles on an Amistad slave ship to an alien world – America. Stripped from her family with only her memories of them and her homeland to stave off the loneliness, Margru had to experience the difficulties of African slavery with only those bound alongside her. She even had to abandon her name, adopting Sarah Kinson instead. But Sarah Margru Kinson didn’t stop dreaming of Africa and returning home.

Author Monica Edinger has put years of detective work into retracing the remarkable footsteps of Sarah Margru Kinson to bring her back to life so she can share her true story of resilience. ‘Africa is My Home’ is a window for young readers to understand this defining piece of heart-breaking history that has helped shaped today’s hopeful world.

Children 10+