“you’re stepping into history
bringing your Caribbean eye
to another horizon”

With one last hug, Windrush chid waves goodbye to his Caribbean home and sets sail across the ocean to Britain. In this powerful picture book, full of hope and promise, celebrated poet John Agard and illustrator Sophie Bass movingly evoke the journey made by children and their families as part of the Windrush Generation.

John Agard’s Windrush Child is a children’s picture book featuring a poem from John Agard. Unless you read the back of the book first in which the term Windrush is explained, the words of the poem won’t mean a lot to a child as it is not explained within the poem.

Each page is adorned with beautiful, colourful, and bright illustrations which complement the words. Personally, I would have loved the book to teach children about the Windrush generation, why they came to the UK, what happened to them once they arrive, and also what has happened in recent years. Children deserve to know about these things, rather than making it all sound so lovely like the book does.

Some of the wording is a little strange but then this is a poem and this is often the case with poems, I’m just not sure aiming the book at children with some odd sentences will make them understand or want to read the book.

Overall, I feel it hit the mark a little and the best feature was the illustrations which really stood out.