Wanjik, Child of Mine

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

A CBC Spring 2024 Showcase Selection

No matter where she goes, or how big she grows, Wanjik knows her name.

In the lush Kenyan countryside, a young Giky girl helps her grandmother with daily tasks. Here, as she tends to the cows, carries water, and plays in the fruit trees and sugarcane, she is called Wanjik.

On the busy city streets of Nairobi, where she goes to school, she is called by her English name, Catherine. But at home with Wangar, the maid who cooks and cares for her, she is again Wanjik.

All grown up in boarding school, Catherine is the leader of her class, surrounded by friends from different cultural backgrounds. But at night, when she gathers with her fellow Giky sisters to speak her mother tongue, she is Wanjik once more.

Gloriously illustrated, alive with the joie de vivre of girlhood, and based on the author's own beloved childhood memories, Wanjik, Child of Mine is an ode to the heritage that walks alongside us, and a love song for the sisters we make on the journey.