Thank you to Bookish for the chance to read an excerpt of this book.
The first two characters introduce the reader to a young Nigerian son of a slain small town police chief. The book is useful to introduce readers to various elements of African cultures, including friendship, family ties, coping with loss and grief, funeral customs, class divides, poverty, and criminality. The author packed a lot into the first couple of chapters and the reader is quickly drawn deep into the story. In the first read, you get to follow the character from his life's low point through to his first experience with his newly obtained power. The book references ghosts and spiritual power, so be aware of this should this pose a concern for your younger readers. While this is written to target a middle school audience, the story is enjoyable by this adult reader, and I think it is a good, enjoyable book to encourage reading among all audiences, but particularly among adolescent and African-American reading populations. Myself, I enjoy the immersion into another culture, and comparing and contrasting the various social, religious, and culture elements described by the author. Even though I am not necessarily the target audience for this book, I thoroughly enjoyed the opening two chapters and look forward to more!
The first two characters introduce the reader to a young Nigerian son of a slain small town police chief. The book is useful to introduce readers to various elements of African cultures, including friendship, family ties, coping with loss and grief, funeral customs, class divides, poverty, and criminality. The author packed a lot into the first couple of chapters and the reader is quickly drawn deep into the story. In the first read, you get to follow the character from his life's low point through to his first experience with his newly obtained power. The book references ghosts and spiritual power, so be aware of this should this pose a concern for your younger readers. While this is written to target a middle school audience, the story is enjoyable by this adult reader, and I think it is a good, enjoyable book to encourage reading among all audiences, but particularly among adolescent and African-American reading populations. Myself, I enjoy the immersion into another culture, and comparing and contrasting the various social, religious, and culture elements described by the author. Even though I am not necessarily the target audience for this book, I thoroughly enjoyed the opening two chapters and look forward to more!