Wanjiku, 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, Wanjikũ knows her name.

In the lush Kenyan countryside, a young Gikũyũ 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 Wanjikũ.

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

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 Gikũyũ sisters to speak her mother tongue, she is Wanjikũ once more.

Gloriously illustrated, alive with the joie de vivre of girlhood, and based on the author’s own beloved childhood memories, Wanjikũ, 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.

Ciiku Ndungu-Case is the founder of the Cheza Nami Foundation, a California based 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that promotes play-based cultural education and diversity awareness, inspired by Ciiku’s childhood in rural Kenya and the lack of accessible educational resources on Africa for her twins, born in 2007. Ciiku work in creating cultural awareness programs has appeared in CBS news, TEDx Livermore, the Oakland Magazine, and several California news outlets. She holds a Master’s degree in Cell and Molecular Biology and is a leader in strategic planning in the pharmaceutical industry.

Karen Vermeulen is an artist, illustrator and teacher living in Cape Town, South Africa, known for her happy, uplifting and quirky creations. She is the illustrator of the 2023 release, It’s Just Skin, Silly!.