The return of Anna Hibiscus is cause to rejoice with these four new paperbacks for newly independent readers or reading aloud. In Welcome Home, Anna Hibiscus!, Anna has returned from visiting Granny Canada, her maternal grandmother. Does her family think she’s changed too much? In Go Well, Anna Hibiscus! and Love from Anna Hibiscus!, Anna visits the village her grandparents left years before for the city where they all live now. Anna is unsure about making friends with the village kids, and aware how different—and in some ways more fortunate—her life is by comparison (she never goes hungry). But she realizes they all have things to learn and things to share with one another. When Anna meets Sunny Belafonte after he steals from her, she’s angry until she understands he did it because he was hungry, sparking her determination to help. In You’re Amazing, Anna Hibiscus!, Anna and her family are navigating grief and loss with the death of her beloved grandfather, who, Anna comes to understand, lives on in memories and stories. Respect, compassion, and understanding are all things Anna is taught by example and through gentle conversation with adults in her life. They are values she easily, innately embraces in the context of stories that are joyful even as they address difficult realities. Anna is biracial (Black/white), while the intentionally unspecified African settings, both city and village, underscore that across Africa there is urban and rural; poverty, wealth, and middle-class life like that of Anna’s family. (Ages 4-8)

The spirited Anna Hibiscus leaves the city to visit her grandparents' remote village in this sixth adventure in the well-loved series set in contemporary West Africa.

Anna Hibiscus lives in Africa, Amazing Africa, in a country called Nigeria, in a city called Lagos. Anna is going with her family and grandfather on a trip to the village where her grandparents used to live, to stay in a house that has long been in their family. The city travelers ride on a packed, sweaty bus through the rainforest, through dusty scrubland, and through fields of bananas and oranges and sugarcane. When the bus lets them off, the village is still a long walk away through the bush. Anna has never been to the bush before--there is no road, no running water, and no electricity! There is plenty to learn, and friends to make too, as Anna's escapades continue in this charming series from Atinuke and Lauren Tobia.