Samuel Ajayi Crowther (For Children)

It is a children’s version of the full-length biography of Samuel Ajayi Crowther. It tells how a boy named Ajayi was taken from his home in what is now Nigeria and sold as a slave, how he was set free and came to know Jesus, and how he spent his life carrying the good news back to his own people in their own language.

A Yoruba man who lived about two hundred years ago. As a boy he was sold as a slave and then set free by the British navy. He became a teacher, an explorer of the great Niger River, the leader of the team that put the Bible into the Yoruba language, and in 1864 the first African bishop of the Anglican Church.

Every chapter is short and made to be read aloud. It begins with a Bible verse, tells one part of Ajayi’s story, shows one simple thing it means for you, and ends with a short prayer. Three questions follow, to talk about together.

Some of it is sad, because being captured and sold was a terrible thing, and the book does not pretend otherwise. But it is told gently, for children, and it is above all a story of how God looked after Ajayi, gave him back his mother, and used his life for great good.

Yes. They come from Samuel Crowther’s own letters and journals and from the people who knew him. A few stories were remembered by his family long afterwards, and the book says so when it tells them.

It is for children, to be read aloud by a grown-up or read by an older child alone. There is also a teen edition, and the full-length biography for older readers.