Our Story Starts in Africa

PATRICE LAWRENCE is an award-winning writer. Her debut YA novel, Orangeboy, won the Bookseller YA Prize and the Waterstones Prize for Older Children’s Fiction and was shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award. Patrice was born in Brighton, raised in an Italian-Trinidadian family in mid-Sussex, and now lives on the South Coast.JEANETTA GONZALES is a Los Angeles based designer and illustrator. She describes herself as a free-spirited artist who loves nature. For her, the imperfect is beautiful. Using a combination of paint, inks and digital illustration, Jeanetta evokes happiness, energy, inspiration and positivity through her love of drawing plants, women, flowers and lettering phrases.

"An in-depth look at community and the political machinations that shape them, gorgeously illustrated by Gonzales." - The Bookseller"…this superbly illustrated, engagingly and sensitively written book…" Red Reading Hub"A bright, enticing picture book that sensitively explores the legacy of colonisation and the sustained telling of African stories" — The Guardian, Best New Picture Books 2022 Bookseller Buyers Guide Pick of the Season