My Cybils Reading

Deerfield, Massachusetts. Photo by my husband, John

I've read dozens of books this month.  Before anyone is impressed, I have to admit that all the books were less than 120 pages. I'm a judge in the Easy Reader and Short Chapter Book categories of the Cybil Awards.

We have 59 books to read across our two lists.  From those, we'll choose 5 easy readers and 5 short chapter books.  It's been great fun, and I only have about 15 more books to hunt down and read.

To keep up with my reading, I've brought a few chapter books on each of my travels. I've enjoyed seeing the surprise and smiles from strangers as I've sat at my airport gates reading Ivy and Bean or Bink and Gollie or The Middle Sheep or The Night Fairy. 

On my recent trip to Kentucky, I had a sweet conversation with the man sitting next to me on the plane.  He had been deer hunting in Maine and was flying back to Indiana.  He smiled at the book I was reading and asked if I were a teacher. 

"I'm a children' book author," I said. "I'm off to Kentucky to speak at a school."  

"Is that your book?" He gestured to Anna Hibiscus in my hands. 

I laughed. "No, I wish it were!  It's really good."

He told me his wife is a public librarian and asked me to write down my name so he could tell her who he had sat with--and the name of the book so he could tell her about it. 

We ended up talking for the whole flight. 



From the publisher:  Anna Hibiscus lives in amazing Africa with her mother, her father, her baby twin brothers, and lots and lots of her family. Join her as she splashes in the sea, prepares for a party, sells oranges, and hopes to see sweet, sweet snow!

About the author:  Atinuke is a Nigerian storyteller. She draws upon her recent ancestry from Yoruba land, England and Wales, and more ancient origins of Spain, Portugal and China, to tell stories from both the world of folktales and contemporary life. She lives in Wales with her husband and two sons. Anna Hibiscus is her first title for Walker Books.

What I love about this book:  The mixed-culture family (the dad is African, the mom is Canadian--we're grounded with the information that they met at college), the beautiful language that is spare enough to work well for early readers' skill levels, but also rises above function to beauty.  It's a dynamic mix of exotic and very familiar as Anna navigates her family and community experiences.  As a former teacher, I love that the story takes students somewhere new in such a  loving way. And yet, there is also much to talk about. The stories are not only sweet and warm, they bring up issues of culture and class in a thoughtful way.

As a writer, I admire that there is depth here. So hard to achieve and so preciously rare in a book so short.