KAP: A Note from the Author
Kenyon Avenue Press (KAP), an independent publishing company located in Durham, NC, is a new individual initiative launched by the author, Leni Smith Covington, in 2021. The mission of KAP is to publish multicultural fairy tales, retold for vocabulary and comprehension development for grades two through three. I conceived of this idea when I taught second grade in the Charlottesville, VA, Waldorf School in 1985 and found a dearth of suitable reading material. I chose to retell fairy tales in a reading level from Fountas and Pinnell, Level M, which is the standard goal for the end of most of Grade 2 public school classrooms across the United States, from California to New Jersey. Of course, some children will be reading at this level earlier or later. Those students mastering English as a second language might read these stories in grades four, five, or six. In addition to advancing academic achievement, these stories were chosen to exemplify the core values of patience, perseverance, joy in hard work, effort, courage, family responsibility and creative problem solving.
Taylor Randolph is the illustrator of the first book, a retelling of the Brothers Grimm story, The Shoemaker and the Elves. She is an artist who has illustrated medical texts in Germany, worked at the Lakota Waldorf School in Kyle, South Dakota, and has served in many volunteer capacities at the Charlottesville Waldorf School.
The book is now available on Amazon and at KAP for $16.95. A Spanish edition was printed in early spring 2022, and is also available. It makes for an excellent Spanish text for middle and high school students. A Mandarin edition is in the works.
A second book, Kosnati and the Dragon, will be published in early summer. It takes place in KwaZulu-Natal in the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa.
Writing these books has been my personal dream for thirty-three years, and it is exciting to see it come to fruition.
Leni Smith Covington, M.Ed.