Book of the Week: Welcome Home, Anna Hibiscus!

Welcome Home, Anna Hibiscus!

by  Atinuke

Illustrated by Lauren Tobia (Anna Hibiscus Book 5) Published by U.S. edition: Kane-Miller, 2017. 110 pages. (pbk. 978-1-61067-678-6)

Ages 4-8

Also reviewed:

Go Well, Anna Hibiscus! (Anna Hibiscus Book 6) Illustrated by Lauren Tobia. U.S. edition: Kane-Miller, 2017. 93 pages (pbk. 978-1-61067-679-3)

Love from Anna Hibiscus! (Anna Hibiscus Book 7) Illustrated by Lauren Tobia. U.S. edition: Kane-Miller, 2017. 95 pages (pbk. 978-1-61067-680-9)

 

You're Amazing, Anna Hibiscus! (Anna Hibiscus Book 8) Illustrated by Lauren Tobia. U.S. edition: Kane-Miller, 2017. 95 pages (pbk. 978-1-61067-681-6)

The return of Anna Hibiscus is cause to rejoice with these four new paperbacks for newly independent readers or reading aloud. In Welcome Home, Anna Hibiscus!, Anna has returned from visiting Granny Canada, her maternal grandmother. Her new experiences make her feel uncertain—does her family think she’s changed too much? But the aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents with whom she lives along with her parents and younger brothers in “amazing Africa” soon reassure her with their welcome and warmth, while a newly hatched chick bonded to Anna leads to amusing antics. In Go Well, Anna Hibiscus! and Love from Anna Hibiscus!, Anna visits the village her grandparents left years before for the city where they all live now. Anna is unsure about making friends with the village kids, and aware how different—and in some ways more fortunate—her life is by comparison (she never goes hungry). But she realizes she and they all have things to learn and things to share with one another. When Anna meets Sunny Belafonte after he steals from her, she’s angry until she understands he did it because he was hungry and is living on his own, sparking Anna’s determination. In You’re Amazing, Anna Hibiscus!, Anna and her family are navigating grief and loss with the death of beloved grandfather, who, Anna comes to understand, lives on in memories and stories. Atinuke is exceptionally attuned to the emotional life of young children. Respect, compassion, and understanding are all things Anna is taught by example and through gentle conversation with adults in her life. They are values she easily, innately embraces in the context of stories that are joyful even as they address difficult realities. Anna is biracial (Black/white), while the intentionally unspecified settings, both city and village, underscore that across Africa there is urban and rural; poverty, wealth, and middle class life like that of Anna’s family.  © 2017 Cooperative Children's Book Center