Press Room

Sankofa

The Fall, 2009 issue of Sankofa, a journal of African children's and young adult literature, includes an article by children's author Beverley Naidoo, our patron. In it, Naidoo uses her experience of visiting KidsLibs and other libraries in Kenya as the starting place for a discussion of how she came to write her novel Burn My Heart, which deals with the relationship between two boys -- one Kikuyu, one a white settler's son -- during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya.

A related article by Naidoo appeared in 2008 in Books for Keeps about the post-election violence and the role that KidsLibs centers played in communities most affected by the crisis. The article is posted on the Books for Keeps website, and you can access it here. 

Stephen with BookAid film crew

Check it out! A few months ago, the staff and members of our Mathare North/MYSA library welcomed a film crew from BookAid International, who visited the library, took a walk in Mathare Valley, and talked to children and adults about the role the library plays in their lives, especially during tough times like the post-election violence. The resulting short film is now on-line in the Books Change Lives section of the Book Aid Web Site.

Joseph from the KidsLibs Trust library in Laikipia, Sipili East, was featured in the October 2009 issue of the Libraries of Hope newsletter! You can read the entire article here.

Libraries of Hope is a project that is republishing classic children's books for sales to families and schools on a subscription basis. They publish one carefully chosen title a month, and only print as many books as there are subscribers. By avoiding the costs of selling through bookstores, they are raising funds to support community library projects like KidsLibs Trust.

A snapshot from the article