Today we are very excited to share an interview with author Kirsten Cappy!
Read on to learn more about the author, the book, and a giveaway!
Meet the Author: Kirsten Cappy
Kirsten Cappy is the co-founder of I’m Your Neighbor Books, a US non-profit organization that places Immigrant and New Generation children’s literature in homes, schools, and libraries to build an environment of welcoming and belonging.
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About the Author: Yaya Gentille
Yaya Gentille is a former educator from the Democratic Republic of Congo who now works with children’s books in the United States.
About the Book: Kende! Kende! Kende!
A multilingual story of love and learning, joy and journey Inspired by the families throughout Central Africa who are forced to leave their homes, this is an honest but hopeful own-voice narrative about displacement, migration, and finding a new home. Having fled their village as conflict approaches, Mamá, Papá, Lolie, and Nico live in a refugee camp until they are chosen for resettlement in North America. Their new city is a go, go, go of new challenges, but also a return to love and learning, joy and journey. A text woven from three languages celebrates multilingual speakers and the resilience of refugees.
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~Author Chat~
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
Children’s books representing immigrant families show readers of all backgrounds that we value immigrant families. As the co-founder of I’m Your Neighbor Books, a nonprofit that uses Immigrant and New Generation children’s books to create an environment of welcoming and belonging, I have been looking for a book featuring a family from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for a decade. None emerged, until I literally walked right straight into a story.
I was trudging home through a fierce and sudden snowstorm. At our city’s biggest intersection, a little blue car was stuck and cutting off traffic in five directions. Out of the whirl, I heard the voice of a Congolese man yell, “I don’t know what to do.” Myself and another (tiny) woman went to his open window. In my broken French I convinced him that he and I would push (I am not tiny) and the other woman would drive (she has grown up driving in snow). As we struggled out of the snow drift, others magically appeared out of the blinding blur of snow. Anyone that has participated in this Northern hemisphere ritual of strangers-helping-strangers knows the triumph and laughter that comes from freeing a car from snow.
I walked home thinking about all this kind man had possibly endured and navigated to get from the DRC to the US. At that moment, snow was just one more bizarre thing to navigate in his new home. I wrote about that episode that very snowy day and then went to my friend Yaya Gentille, a former early education teacher from DRC, with the idea of creating a picture book together. We started a two-pandemic-years’ process of trading manuscript drafts left under a brick on her front steps. Yaya wrote in French, I wrote in English, and across languages and experiences, the story emerged. In that process, the snowstorm became the second part of the book and an imagined life leaving the DRC became the first part.
YABC: Who is your favorite character in the book?
I think Yaya and I love Lolie for her initial joyful need for speed and her unerring curiosity. Prior to the launch, the book has been in the hands of the incredible group of immigrant advisors, translators, and narrators. Some of those adults saw their childhood migration journeys in Lolie. Others, who fled war zones with their own children, were drawn to the impossible decisions and sacrifices Lolie’s parents had to make to keep their children safe.
YABC: Which came first, the title or the novel?
Lingala is Lolie’s family’s home language. Like English, the word “go” in Lingala (“kende”) can change connotations. As Yaya and I wrote the text, Lolie’s need for speed (being pushed by her Papa in the wheelbarrow) became a frightening need for speed as the family flees their town (with their belongings in the same wheelbarrow). After the family is resettled in a new country, the go, go, go pace of the new culture both excites and exhausts the family. With Lingala dialogue integrated throughout the French/English text, the repeated refrain of, “Kende! Kende! Kende!,” became central the story and a natural fit for the title. A children’s book title in Lingala may be a first.
YABC: What scene in the book are you most proud of, and why?
The translation and recording of the book in the seven languages most common in the Great Lakes region of Africa is what we are most proud of. Books cannot truly welcome refugees if they are solely in English. The authors worked with six grant-supported immigrant translators and seven readers to create free QR-Code-delivered audio read-alouds available to anyone in the front of the book.We are in awe that Child’s Play International was willing to trust and try this and that I’m Your Neighbor Books’ supporters and volunteers could contribute to this ground-breaking and creative solution to break the multilingual barrier to picture books.
Our favorite scene created by the ever-so-brilliant illustrator Rahana Dariah is when Lolie and Nico are kneeling in quiet wonder watching the snow fall outside their apartment window. On the other side of the room, Mama is telling Papa, “Tosengeli kokende!” (we have to go) as she is in labor with their third child. Like on all of the pages, Rahana Dariah and art director Annie Kubler captured both love and tension.
YABC: Thinking way back to the beginning, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned as a writer from then to now?
As someone that uses children’s books to create community connections, I believe that stories can change us. Creating this story furthered my certainty that stories are collective creations. This book has two names on the cover, but many, many voices.
YABC: What do you like most about the cover of the book?
The joy. Papa is pushing Lolie in the wheelbarrow and they are both laughing. It shows that families experience joy before war tears open their lives. With conflicts across the globe and the current displacement of millions, people living in safety can consciously or unconsciously assume that such hardship is inevitable in other places and communities. Thinking the loss of joy and safety is inevitable for some people keeps many, I think, from compassionate action. Individual stories restore a collective empathy. May you think of Papa, Lolie, and their wheelbarrow when you hear about the conflict and refugee crisis in DRC and elsewhere. They deserved to stay in their home with their chickens and blue wheelbarrow—and their joy.
YABC: What new release book are you looking most forward to in 2025?
As the Executive Director of I’m Your Neighbor Books, I am looking forward to every single book that diversifies the emerging Immigrant and New Generation genre we track in our database and we curate for schools. libraries, and communities with our Welcoming Libraries.
YABC: What’s a book you’ve recently read and loved?
The picture book I keep on my desk is Me and My Fear by Francesca Sanna (Flying Eye Books). It tells the story of an immigrant girl (or any girl) grappling with an anxiety that takes the form of a large white protector (and overprotector.) Yaya Gentille loves the photographs by Shelley Rotner of new arrival children in the picture book Finding Home: Words from Kids Seeking Sanctuary : Kids and Their Words on Displacement (Clarion).
YABC: What’s up next for you?
Sharing the Pine Project, a free self-led Professional Development created by I’m Your Neighbor Books for educators. The PD uses the Social Emotional Learning journeys of the characters in Immigrant and New Generation picture books to help educators explore how race, culture, and the barriers and scaffolding of belonging can be incorporated into their teaching.
YABC: Which was the most difficult or emotional scene to narrate?
When Mama watching smoke in the distance says, “Tosengeli kokende!” or “We have to go.” Despite setting out to write about a family forced to leave home, we didn’t want them to leave home.
YABC: Which character gave you the most trouble when writing your latest book?
Lolie’s Mana and Papa (like all refugee parents) do what is necessary to keep their children safe,. Their impossible decisions and actions are powered by love. There is a moment in the book, though, where Papa feels powerless. He is confronted with one new thing too many. We struggled with that scene. How to show that his resilience and strength are monumental, but are not available to him at that moment? The daughter he so lovingly raised, though, is able to step in with her strengths. Her strengths are his strengths. Again, illustrator Rahana Dariah captured that moment perfectly, creating a sense of isolation—one man alone in a storm. And, then Lolie, calling out to a broader community (barely visible on the storm) to ask for their strength.
YABC: What is the main message or lesson you would like your reader to remember from this book?
Refugee families are families. The conflicts that affect them are not their doing. The exclusion of refugee families from resettling in a new home because of vastly insufficient refugee resettlement quotas and/or anti-immigrant political rhetoric and policy, denies families their human right to safety and joy. Denying families refuge may gain some a sense of physical or economic safety, but I wonder what is lost of our common humanity in that process?
YABC: What would you say is your superpower?
Stubbornness.
YABC: Is there an organization or cause that is close to your heart?
Working at I’m Your Neighbor Books, my heart is with all of the small and large organizations that protect and support immigrant communities across the globe.
YABC: What advice do you have for new writers?
Read the picture book Me and My Fear by Francesca Sanna (Flying Eye Books) and see how letting go of fear and seeing the fear of others can make us each storytellers.
YABC: Is there anything that you would like to add?
Yaya Gentille gave her heart and brilliance to this book, but will not be appearing in its promotion. Many readers want to know an author’s personal story and connect it with the book. That natural curiosity can be uncomfortable or unwelcome. This story comes from many stories both real and imagined, but it is not Yaya’s personal story. This story is Lolie’s story.
~ Giveaway Details ~
Five (5) winners will receive a copy of Kende! Kende! Kende! (Kirsten Cappy and Yaya Gentille) ~US Only!
*Click the Rafflecopter link below to enter the giveaway*
