Beverley Naidoo

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Beverley Naidoo

children's books who lives in the UK. Her first three novels featured life in South Africa where she lived until her twenties.[1] She has also written a biography of the trade unionist Neil Aggett.[2]

Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.[3]

Naidoo won the Josette Frank Award twice – in 1986 for Journey to Jo'burg and in 1997 for No Turning Back: A Novel of South Africa.

Biography

Beverley Naidoo was born on 21 May 1943 in Johannesburg, South Africa. She grew up under apartheid laws that gave privilege to white children. Black children were sent to separate, inferior schools and their families were told where they could live, work and travel. Apartheid denied all children the right to grow up together with equality, justice and respect.

She graduated from the

Goldsmiths College, University of London, and run workshops for young people and adults in Britain and abroad, including for the British Council.[4]
She married another South African exile.[5] Apartheid laws forbade marriage between white and black people and barred them living together with their children in South Africa.

As a child Naidoo always loved stories but only started writing when her own children were growing up. Her first book, Journey to Jo'burg, won The Other Award in Britain. It opened a window onto children's struggles under apartheid. In South Africa it was banned until 1991, the year after Nelson Mandela was released from jail. A few years later, when the parents of all South African children had the right to vote for the first time, Nelson Mandela was elected president.

Naidoo was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.[6]

Books

Journey to Jo'burg, Chain of Fire and Out of Bounds are set in

Mau Mau Uprising.[7]

Naidoo has also written several picture books, featuring children from Botswana and England. In 2004, she wrote the picture book papa,s Gift, set in contemporary South Africa, with her daughter, Maya Naidoo.

Brer Rabbit
tales.

Works
Picture books
  • Letang and Julie Save the Day (1994)
  • Letang's New Friend (1994)
  • Trouble for Letang and Julie (1994)
  • Where Is Zami? (1998)
  • King Lion in Love (2004)
  • Baba's Gift (2004), by Beverley and Maya Naidoo
  • S Is for South Africa
  • Aesop's Fables, a retelling with illustrations by Piet Grobler

References

  1. ^ "Novels" Archived 30 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Beverley Naidoo: Author.
  2. ^ "A family’s loss, a country’s painful past". Sue-Grant Marshall.Business Day, 23 October 2012.
  3. ^ (Carnegie Winner 2000). Living Archive: Celebrating the Carnegie and Greenaway Winners.
    CILIP
    . Retrieved 2012-08-17.
  4. ^ "Beverley Naidoo - Literature". literature.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 5 January 2022.
  5. ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved 12 March 2024.
  6. ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved 13 July 2023.
  7. ^ Burn My Heart Archived 3 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine. Beverley Naidoo: Author.
  8. ^ Baba's Gift Archived 3 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine. Beverley Naidoo: Author.

External links

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