The work Hena Khan is doing is vital — and I’m truly grateful she is sharing her voice with our students and readers around the world. Even a week after the presentation, I’m still seeing Hena Khan’s impact ripple through my classroom… from students teaming up to create their own graphic novels to asking for journals so they can begin telling their own stories. It’s not every day that they light up about something academic, and it’s been a joy watching them pore over books and dive into storytelling since meeting Hena Khan.

It was a pleasure to host Ms. Khan at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Over the course of two days, she visited multiple neighborhood libraries and met with numerous school children. Ms. Khan beautifully adapted her presentation to fit each audience. She was equally at ease with a large group of kindergarten students, a special education class, and an inquisitive teen reading group. Her message was clear — we all have a story to tell! Any school, library or community group would be lucky to have Ms. Khan visit to share her stories and her path to becoming a writer.

Yesterday the Lower School was extremely fortunate to have an amazing visit from author Hena Khan. Ms. Khan is a Pakistani-American Muslim writer who spoke to our PK to Grade 1 girls about the importance of finding themselves in literature and on the importance of keeping an open mind to all people – no matter how different they may seem to you. She spoke to our 2nd to 4th grade students about how we are all heroes. She reiterated our theme for the year that we all have super powers and the best of these come from inside – they are the characteristics that make us stronger and make us kinder people. Finally, she presented an educational workshop to our fifth graders about how to improve their writing. She gave the girls (and the adults) some wonderful tips on how to make their writing more engaging.  Ms. Khan was a delightful speaker to all of the girls and you could hear each group singing her praises as they left the assembly.

I think over the course of the years I’ve been director here, I’ve had at least 15 author visits. Authors generally are very nice people, but you are definitely in a league of your own. Thank you for your wisdom, your graciousness, and for just being a delightful person to spend a few days with. I can’t tell you how many people expressed how much they enjoyed and appreciated your talk Thursday night. And I’ve heard from two 2nd grade teachers who couldn’t stop raving about how important your school visit was. Along with being a great writer – you are a wonderful ambassador. Your visit will definitely go down in our memories as one of the best author visits we’ve ever had.

Hena is a great speaker whose love for writing and her characters comes through in her presentation! It was very powerful and the feedback from our students was extremely positive. They felt as though they had learned something important and appreciated Hena’s message and passion.

Truthfully, she did an amazing job and our students were interested, excited and had some really great questions. She spoke about Islamic culture and traditions and the research side of her chapter books…they were interested in it all! And I can’t tell you how thrilled our Muslim students were to be recognized. It was a wonderful experience for all of us.

Author Hena Khan’s visit to two of our school campuses was fabulous! She was able to captivate students at a range of ages all the way from the PreK 4 and kindergarten students to our third through fifth graders. She has a warm and gentle way of introducing herself and her Muslim culture that will prepare these students to be open and understanding of differences they experience in their communities and their schools. Every comment I heard from teachers the next day was overwhelmingly positive!

After our schools were forced to end in-person programs because of COVID, Hena adapted her presentation to fit an online format, met with each classroom individually through Zoom, and provided signed bookplates in advance so our students could have autographed copies of her books. We were thrilled to be able to offer our schools an amazing event, and received nothing but positive feedback from our teachers and kids.