Of course, the children don't walk the entire distance but, the journey is long and one where they begin to realise the impact and injustice of apartheid law.

For that work she won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.

Newspaper articles from Beverley's collection with a copy of Journey to Jo'burgwhich includes two real newspaper articles at the beginning of the story. Journey to Jo'burg was considered an 'undesirable' import and was seized when Naidoo sent copies of the book to South Africa. Thousands of children were reading the book around the world but the apartheid government refused to let South African children read it until 1991, the year after Nelson Mandela was released from jail. This material demonstrates just how meticulous Naidoo is in getting her stories and their message just right.

According to Naidoo the 'Most exciting for me is when I feel my writing has really touched a nerve' ( http://www. After publication, Beverley Naidoo tried to send the book to her nieces and nephews in South Africa. The associations from school children, a small selection of which you can see in the above photograph, are a very interesting way to look at perceptions of South Africa. Her 2007 novel Burn My Heart has an imagined point of reference in the boyhood in Kenya of a second cousin, Neil Aggett, being set in the 1950s during the Mau Mau Uprising.Apartheid laws forbade marriage between white and black people and barred them living together with their children in South Africa.

so simple and straightforward that it makes accessible even to quite young children the difficult and the profound. This is the notice sent to Beverley's sister-in-law from the Doeane en Aksyns Customs and Excise to inform of the seizure of prohibited material. What Naidoo did with Journey to Jo'burg was to make the reality of apartheid South Africa accessible to a younger audience, and it is sadly a story with persevering relevance. You may remember that we received Beverley Naidoo's collection early last year and almost as soon as it was unpacked and listed we took some of the Journey to Jo’burg files to a school in County Durham – you can read about the resulting event here .Black children were sent to separate, inferior schools and their families were told where they could live, work and travel. Most of these drafts include extensive annotation, changes and significant developments which give us insight into how Naidoo works as an author. Walking is a very prominent feature in Beverley Naidoo's Journey to Jo’burg, a story that delivers a subtle and powerful message about apartheid South Africa.

D. from the University of Southampton and worked as Adviser for Cultural Diversity and English in Dorset. Journey to Jo'burg, Chain of Fire and Out of Bounds are set in South Africa under apartheid, while No Turning Back concerns the experiences of a boy trying to survive on the streets of Johannesburg in the immediate post-apartheid years. The files we hold for 'Censoring Reality' demonstrate Niadoo's active stance against biasedliteraturefor children, working towards an informedportrayalofworld issues and equality.Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately. Naidoo found misleadingportrayalsof South Africa, racist perceptions and a very limited, one sided view of a country under apartheid law. This has been awarded to Seven Stories in recognition of the museum’s national role in telling a comprehensive story of modern British children’s literature. Her involvement with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa led to her being imprisoned in solitary confinement for eight weeks at the age of 21.