Children’s dreams

Marina Michaelidou-Kadi was born and grew up in Limassol, Cyprus. She studied psychology at Boston University and has a doctoral degree in natural resources management from Cornell University. Today, she writes stories for children about different social and environmental issues.  She lives in Nicosia with her husband and two young children, who provide much inspiration for her books.

Some of her books have been awarded and translated into other languages. Sabel’s red dress (2014), about a young refugee girl, was selected by the International Youth Library in Munich for the White Ravens 2014 catalogue and was shortlisted for the Greek IBBY Book Awards. Nicolas and Elli (2012), about the life of a zoo elephant, received the Cyprus Literature Award for Young Children and was included in the IBBY Honor List for 2016. Semeli’s smile (2011) received the Children’s Book Award by the Cyprus Bibliographical Society. In 2015, in collaboration with Mehves Beyidoglu, they wrote the first bilingual (Greek/Turkish) children’s book in Cyprus, From the earth to the stars.