Lyra Edmonds

I truly loved reading this book. The main character, Lyra, is very well developed and relatable for many children. It was very interesting reading as she, like many others, experiences a minor identity crisis from losing touch with her cultural and familial background. This is shown in the book by Lyra's hesitation to call herself an African Princess. The book follows her in her journey to find and validate herself as an African princess. This book was written from Lyra's point of view, show more giving the reader insight to Lyra's internal thoughts and feelings. For example. when Lyra's family gets off of the plane, Lyra explains, "I feel the words bubble up inside me and escape my mouth," showing her excitement being in her mom's native country. The bigger picture of this book is to be proud of your culture and family, and it encourages readers to explore their own family and culture. show less

This was a very thought-provoking book to read. It was an easy read, but it did make the reader think about their own heritage and how they may treat others who have different backgrounds then theirs. The main character Lyra gets teased at school for saying she is an African Princess and her classmates are the ones doing the teasing. She comes home and tells her mother about it who then decides to take Lyra to her home country and show her that she is truly an African Princess. When Lyra show more comes back her classmates honor her as the African Princess. Lyra feels welcomed and feels like she is actually an African Princess. This is a heart-felt story about a girl who discovers the true meaning behind her heritage. I believe students of all ages would benefit from this story, but especially students at the younger ages who may not understand other students' backgrounds and may need this reassurance that their background/heritage is okay and that they can share it with their classmates. show less

An African Princess is about a young girl named Lyra who is living in the city, on the tenth floor of a building. She believes she is an African princess when she wears her robe, but her school friends laugh at her. No one who lives where she lives could be a princess. When she goes to her mom for comfort, her mom tells her she is bringing her to Africa to see her African princess. Lyra is all excited and brags to her friends. While in Africa, she gets to see her roots, where her family is show more from, and learns so much. Lyra learns a valuable lesson: Remember to be proud of who you are. Lyra needed to learn that it only matters what you think. If she believes she's an African princess, she is. It doesn't matter what her classmates think of her. She needs to be proud of where she's from and what she believes. The book brought a lot of the African culture which was helpful and I learned from it. I liked the illustrations because it was very colorful and it showed how small towns in African really look like. This book is very realistic to me. Many schools have children with from different continents and they wear or say things "different" from us here in the US and kids will laugh. But going back to your roots always makes you feel better and confident in yourselves again. I liked this book because it shows that. Children can learn from this book for sure. show less

I liked this book because I feel like it’s about not how others see you, but how you see yourself. The main character, Lyra, is from Africa and she is an African princess but her friends see her as a regular person. She gets discourages and her mother takes her back to Africa to see her roots and see that she actually is a princess. When she comes back to school, she’s very confident and I believe this is a great lesson for a human. It only matters how you value yourself. The language in show more the book is very self-explanatory except for when they arrive in Africa. They mention the different things they see and there are pictures of them, but I feel as though some readers may not make that comparison and know what they are talking about. This book would have been great with a glossary in the back of the book for clarification. At times I feel like things become jumpy because they don’t talk much about the ride back to Africa or even leaving. The next page just shows the main character back at home. The author also doesn’t have a lot to say when Lyra is talking to the princess in Africa. But other than that, the book was well written and everything was in order. The characters were Lyra, her mom, her dad, the princess in Africa, and the children at school. They were all believable because this is book represents something that would really happen, which would place this book under the contemporary realistic fiction section. It’s very possible for a girl, who was originally from Africa, to live in America and then go back to Africa to know more about her heritage. This fact is another reason why I thought this was a really nice book. The book was also told from the main character, Lyra’s, point of view. The authors name was also Lyra, so this story is probably about her journey to Africa. The story also had the regular “problem/solution” conflict. The flow of these events made sense as well except for those two sudden stops explained above. I really enjoyed the illustrations in the book. They were very colorful, especially when they went to Africa. You could tell that they were in another part of the world without even reading the words on the page. I also enjoyed the fact that all of the people in the book, especially those in Africa weren’t all one color. There’s even a drawing of a tourist taking pictures in African and he is a white man. This was a nice integration of all raced within one page. The bright colors definitely set the mood because you could tell that there was a happy and exciting atmosphere when they went to Africa. Even though I briefly explained the underlying message in the beginning, the other part to it could be that you can be a princess no matter what you look like. They touched on this when they went to visit the other princess in Africa. The author made sure to explain where and on what kind of house she lived in. show less