SuitabookLionheart Girl
Yaba Badoe
- Reading
- Consider reading alongside the child, especially around the mother’s treatment of Sheba and the supernatural threats. Pause to discuss how hair, names, ancestors and community care are given meaning within the story.
- Themes
- Growing into power and identity: Sheba develops powers while learning about her family, femininity, heritage and obligations to ancestors and community. The book presents this favourably.
- Family, care and harm: Sheba is raised within a women-led household and community while her mother’s absence and frightening returns shape family life. Care is shown as collective and protective, while biological parenthood is associated with absence, fear and harm in the described conflict.
- Hair, culture and inner self: Women in Sheba’s family read, wash, style and care for hair as part of magical healing and as a way of understanding the person. Hair is treated as culturally significant, intimate and connected with identity, soul and self-affirmation rather than mere decoration.
- Worth knowing
- Prepare for emotionally intense material: Sheba is frightened of her mother, who is described as cruel, dangerous and a soul-eater. The story also includes murderous intent, loss, curses, grief and unsettling supernatural imagery.