Onjali Q. Raúf
The Letter with the Golden Stamp
(Age 8+)

Saturday 12 April 2025
3.00pm - 4.00pm; £5 + £3 per accompanying adult*
(* 1 adult must accompany each group) 

Central Library, 555 Silbury Blvd,
Central Milton Keynes, MK9 3HL

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I can't remember how old I was when I first started collecting stamps. But I've got a whole shoebox full of them now.

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​Mam used to help me collect them ... Before she got so ill that she lost her job, her friends...everything.

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Join the multi-award-winning author, Onjali Q. Raúf, as she shares the adventures of a small girl with some big secrets to keep.

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The Letter with the Golden Stamp is the compassionate and uplifting tale of a secret Young Carer (and thief…) with a mysterious invisible neighbour who just might be a spy. With her two best friends and her friendly neighbourhood postman – and fellow stamp collector – in tow, Audrey must find a way to save her family…

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Drawing on her own experiences as a Young Carer – and stamp collector – Onjali celebrates the hidden army of Young Carers daily keeping their loved ones alive behind closed doors, and the everyday s/heroes that surround them. The Letter with the Golden Stamp delves into the fears and hopes of Young Carers everywhere, and the invisible sources of kindness knocking on all our doors.

 

About Onjali Q. Raúf
Onjali Q. Raúf is a multi award-winning children’s author, playwright and women’s and refugee human rights activist. She is the founder and CEO of Making Herstory which works to end the abuse, enslavement and trafficking of women and girls in the UK, and  O’s Refugee Aid Team which mobilises aid convoys and funds to help frontline refugee response teams across northern France and beyond. She is the author of multi-award-winning and Sunday Times bestselling children’s book, The Boy at the Back of the Class, which received the Blue Peter Award and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2019, the Sakura Medal of Japan in 2020 and the Janusz Korczak Prize in 2022 amongst many others. From February to July of 2024, a theatre adaptation of the story toured across England. Her follow-up stories include The Star Outside My Window, The Night Bus Hero, The Great Food Bank Heist, The Lion Above the Door, Where Magic Grows, a non-fiction title, Hope on the Horizon, and most recently, The Letter With the Golden Stamp and a first picture book, The Girl at the Front of the Class. She was awarded an MBE in 2022 for her services to women’s rights and children’s literature, and in 2023, was recipient of the NEU Fred and Anne Jarvis Award for services to education and her humanitarian works.

Onjali is also a Patron of the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE), VIP Reading, Facefront Theatre, and NIA Women; a Trustee of Killed Women (KWN); an Ambassador for Walk With Amal, and a contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought. An alumnus of the Cambridge University Senior Faith in Leadership programme, she was listed as one of BBC’s 100 most influential women from around the world in 2019. 

More about Onjali:

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