num_pages: 64
description: Inspired by a true account here is the compelling story of a child who arrives in America on the slave ship Amistad and eventually makes her way home to Africa.When a drought hits her homeland in Sierra Leone nine-year-old Magulu is sold as a pawn by her father in exchange for rice. But before she can work off her debt an unthinkable chain of events unfolds: a capture by slave traders; weeks in a dark and airless hold; a landing in Cuba where she and three other children are sold and taken aboard the Amistad; a mutiny aboard ship; a trial in New Haven that eventually goes all the way to the Supreme Court and is argued in the Africans favor by John Quincy Adams. Narrated in a remarkable first-person voice this fictionalized book of memories of a real-life figure retells history through the eyes of a child  from seeing mirrors for the first time and struggling with laughably complicated clothing to longing for family and a home she never forgets. Lush full-color illustrations by Robert Byrd plus archival photographs and documents bring an extraordinary journey to life.
language: English
title: Africa Is My Home: A Child of the Amistad
publisher: Candlewick Press