My critique partner and friend Toni Buzzeo sent a note, "You must read this book." This book was Muktar and the Camels by Janet Graber with oil painting illustrations by Scott Mack.
Boy Reading, from the BBC Photo Journal
I had just met a woman from Somalia who had lived in a refugee camp in the North Eastern Province of Kenya from the time she was eight years old until she was a teenager.
She knows about the setting of this book, an orphanage for children from nomadic Somali families. In the book, the boy Muktar is homesick for his
traveling life and the camels that are most valued by his people. And then, three camels arrive to his orphanage, but these camels are carrying library books. Janet Graber is telling a story of the Kenya National Library Service who do indeed transport books by camel in the North Eastern Province. The camels travel from the city of Garissa. Here is a Photo Journal of the Kenyan Camel Library from the BBC.
You must go to this site - KidsLibs - a project to bring libraries to children in poor neighborhoods in Nairobi and also rural Laikipia in Kenya.
This is a boy outside a library in Sipili. Bikes are among items on the wish list for each of the four libraries that librarian Anne Moore has created so far.
Kids at the Mathare North center gathered with Susan Phillips to read stories, talk about the kinds of stories they liked, then created characters for their own stories which they wrote and illustrated. You can read a series of stories about Thomas and Queenventure: "Once upon a time in the city of Mombasa lived a beautiful girl named Queenventure." Read more.
You will also see poems, pin hole photography (the first photo above was created in Mathare North), and sunprints created by kids in library programs. "Just a little bit magic" was the way Susan described the pinhole photographs.
The libraries themselves are a lot of magic for Kenyan kids. Do you live near one of Kenya's kidslibs libraries? Would you write us a comment about books you like or what you like to do there?
