2018 School Spending Survey Report
Africa Is My Home: A Child of the Amistad
illus. by Robert Byrd. 64p. map. notes. Candlewick. Oct. 2013. Tr $17.99. ISBN 978-0-7636-5038-4. LC 2012947752.
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Gr 4–8—The events surrounding the abduction, mutiny, and legal trials of the Amistad Africans have been retold in a number of books, but few are told from the point of view of the children on the ship. In this novel based on the experiences of a real person, nine-year-old Magulu sails for seven weeks to Cuba on a slave ship. After being sold, she boards the Amistad. A rebellion leads to fighting and eventual jail time and several trials. Now 12 years old, she and the other children are finally declared free and allowed to return home. How she earns her passage and an education are part of this remarkable story of resilience, faith, and hope. Byrd's ink and watercolor illustrations show lush green areas of West Africa; as Magulu travels, the colors darken until she is returned to Africa. Highly detailed illustrations contrast life and dress in Africa with those in Cuba and Connecticut. The maps and recurring dream scenes are lovely and intriguing. Interspersed throughout the book are primary-image sources. Edinger gives Magulu a voice of her own as she narrates her story. The child's character is fleshed out as readers watch her grow from age nine when she is pawned during a drought to adulthood when she becomes a teacher in her beloved homeland. With more than 40 stunning illustrations, this unique narrative should find an appreciative audience.—Glynis Jean Wray, Ocean County Library, Toms River, NJEdinger creates a fictional first-person voice, undergirded by extensive research, for Margru, one of four Mende children aboard the Amistad, and through her eyes relates her enslavement in Africa, the revolt aboard ship during which Cinque and the other Mende took control of the Amistad, and the captives’ two-year stay in Connecticut while their case for mutiny was being tried. Edinger avoids sensationalism without underselling the more disturbing parts of the story (the horrors of the Middle Passage, for instance, are evoked in six stark sentences on a black double-page spread). The uncertainty of Margru’s situation and the peril faced by Cinque and the other mutineers keep tension high. Byrd’s pen-and-watercolor illustrations use detailed but informal lines to both embellish and extend the story, and they share space in the open and varied book design with archival images and boxes containing excerpts from newspapers and other contemporary sources; periodic full-page vignettes show Margru dreaming of home and foreshadow her eventual return to Africa. An author’s note describes Edinger’s motivation in seeking out Margru’s story and traces some of her research methods, but it is her skill in imagining Margru’s life from those original sources that opens up this episode in history to young readers. anita l. burkam
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