Review of Boundless Grace by Mary Hoffman ✊🏿
I love the Grace series. In Boundless Grace, (available on Amazon) the protagonist, Grace a young girl parents are divorced. Her father went back home to Gambia. One day Grace gets a surprise. Her father has sent money for her to come for a visit and Grace isn’t sure what to feel or think. She loves her mother however she is curious about her father who she hasn’t seen since she was a baby though he writes to her. Once she is in Gambia, she meets her younger brother and sister and her stepmother. Grace’s misplaced feeling has her acting out toward the stepmother who is trying hard to build a relationship. The ending of how this all works out is realistic.
Half of all marriages end in divorce and there are often children that are caught up in the fray. This book tackles the complications of divorce and the feelings it brings out with children. This book is very timely, and I feel it would be a good story to read to children who have been impacted by divorce.
Mary Hoffman is not a black woman, yet she deals very well with the feelings of a young African-American girl. She is from the UK and has written more than 90 books that have been translated into 30 languages for children and teens.
Illustrator Caroline Binch has Grace in a natural hairstyle, and I think that is important for children especially Black children to see depictions of them wearing natural hair. I also loved the pictures of the people in Gambia wearing traditional African dress.
Candace Waller is the author of, What Goes Around Comes Around the sequel Good Things Comes, and the upcoming book Lessons I Learned From Loving You, A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Healing.