Youngest SA iconic author
Tshepo Moloi
Stacey Fru is a 13-year-old teen sensation, as South Africa’s multiple international award winning child author, activist, philanthropist, edutainer in an online Children’s Television South Africa (CTVSA), public speaker and brand ambassador.
She was born on 16 February 2007, the second child of Dr Emmanuel Fru, a political scientist and Victorine Fru, a master’s degree graduate in communication science.
She is a Grade 8 pupil at Sacred Heart College. Her five children’s books are entitled Smelly Cats (2015), Bob and the Snake (2016), Smelly Cats on Vacation (2018), Tim’s Answer (2019) and Where is Tammy (2019).
Themes in her books vary from culture, illiteracy, religion, respect, love, health, difference, abuse, role models, trafficking, family, friendship, safety and security. Her books support why she is surreal for her age.
She has become South Africa’s, Africa’s and perhaps even the world’s, youngest international multiple award-winning author in the genre of children’s books.
She wrote her initial book, Smelly Cats, aged seven in 2014 without her parents’ awareness.
The message of the first book focuses on variances ensuing from social and religious beliefs. Smelly Cats made her the youngest winner of the National Development Agency’s (NDA) Early Childhood Development award as Best ECD Publication 2015: Special Mention Category’, a prize donated by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Furthermore, Smelly Cats has been approved by the Department of Basic Education as a recommended text for pupils, from the early childhood phase up to primary school level.
In Bob and the Snake (2016) the key message centred on friendship. In the third book, Smelly Cats on Vacation (2018), a sequel to the first book Smelly Cats, focuses on study habits, rest and respect.
Her fourth and fifth books, Tim’s Answer and Where is Tammy? were concurrently published in July 2019. The former deals with the theme of role models and the latter focuses on safety and security. She has stated that her ensuing book will be a novel.
Stacey’s age defying accolades are enlisted at www.staceyfru.co.za. They include her selection as the youngest Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 influential South Africans in 2016; winning the African Child Award for Creative Writing and Social Impact awarded by the Pan African Leadership and Entrepreneurship Development Centre (PALEDEC), in partnership with the International Human Rights Commission, hosted in Accra, Ghana in 2019; the Egyptian President El Sisi’s acknowledgement of Stacey Fru as the Youngest Promising and Most Inspiring Arab African Youth, at the World Youth Forum’s Arab and Youth Summit, hosted in Aswan, Egypt in 2019; recipient of The Global Child Prodigy Award, received in the category of writing, hosted in New Delhi, India in 2019; appointed as custodian of the annual African Children of the Year Awards (partnering with UNICEF to celebrate World Children’s Day, every first Saturday of November) and being selected as an ‘Ambassador of the Youth Café (to champion ‘Youth Empowerment in Africa’) in 2020.
