There is Chichi, a girl with a smart mouth and a quick wit, who doesn’t go to school and lives in a tiny hut with her strange mother and hundreds of books. There is Orlu, her classmate, a kind-hearted boy who has a natural talent for undoing juju spells. Soon, Sunny makes three new friends who introduce her to the secret world of magic. This is the first sign that Sunny is not like other kids. Then one night during a blackout, Sunny stares into a candle’s flame and sees a horrifying vision of the end of the world. Her grandmother, whom Sunny never met, was a mysterious figure that Sunny’s mother refuses to talk about, and Sunny’s parents aren’t exactly clear about why they decided to move Sunny back to Nigeria. Sunny also has to deal with her family’s complicated past. Sunny stands out in more ways than one – she’s albino, she’s a prodigy at soccer, and she’s teased at school for being an akata (literally a ‘wild animal’) because she is from America. but recently moved to her parents’ homeland of Nigeria. Our main character is Sunny, a twelve-year-old girl born in the U.S. As you can guess, I’m a sucker for all kinds of mythology, and this middle grade/YA fantasy is steeped in the myth and magic of Nigeria.

I spent the weekend with a great book: Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor.

Learn more about Nnedi at and follow Nnedi on twitter (as Facebook and Instagram. She lives with her daughter Anyaugo in Phoenix, AZ. Her debut novel Zahrah the Windseeker won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. Her many works include Who Fears Death (winner of the World Fantasy Award and in development at HBO as a TV series), the Nebula and Hugo award winning novella trilogy Binti (in development as a TV series), the Lodestar and Locus Award winning Nsibidi Scripts Series, LaGuardia (winner of a Hugo and Eisner awards for Best Graphic Novel) and her most recent novella Remote Control. Born in the United States to two Nigerian (Igbo) immigrant parents and visiting family in Nigeria since she was a child, the foundation and inspiration of Nnedi’s work is rooted in this part of Africa. The more specific terms for her works are africanfuturism and africanjujuism, both terms she coined and defined. Nnedi Okorafor is a New York Times Bestselling writer of science fiction and fantasy for both children and adults.

Akata witch series