Watch Tomi Adeyemi Talk about Her Best Selling Book ‘Children of Blood and Bone’ on ABC News
Presently, the greatest news in the literary world is that Tomi Adeyemi, a 24-year old Nigerian-American author has signed one of the biggest book deals ever for a young adult author.
Her book, Children of Blood and Bone has been described the biggest fantasy debut novel of 2018 and has obtained a movie deal reported to be worth seven figures.
Tomi wanted to just write about her heroic tale of an oppressive world where magic has been banned, she didn’t know the book would be widely accepted that it would be compared to movies like Game of Thrones and Black Panther.
According to her, the book is basically Black Panther, but with magic.
For Tomi, the main reason for the book is, “to write for black teenage girls growing up reading books they were absent from. That was my experience as a child. Children of Blood and Bone is a chance to address that. To say you are seen.”
A graduate of English literature at Harvard before going to Brazil on a fellowship to study west African culture and mythology, Tomi was in South America when she got inspired to write the book.
The book is about a fisherman’s daughter Zélie and an unlikely band of friends and enemies on a quest to reawaken magic in the country of Orïsha.
As a Nigerian, all the characters in her book carry the Nigerian name and identity.
