9-Year-Old Brooklyn Girl Youngest to Ever Publish Chapter Book

Anaya Lee Willabus, a 9-year-old girl from Brooklyn, N.Y., became the youngest person to publish a chapter book in U.S. history.

Anaya, who penned The Day Mohan Found His Confidence, described on Amazon as realistic fiction, is “about a boy’s struggle to balance life at home and school, and how he realizes he can do anything with the help of his family and friends,” Ayana said in an interview with WPIX.

“I like to read all genres, of books,” Anaya told the New York Daily News. “I love both reading and writing. They both have something that I love in them.”

Her proud mother, Dimple Willabus, said she knew something was special about Anaya from a young age.

“We knew something was different with her. She never learned to walk. She actually started running. She started reading at two years old.”

Anaya’s favorite books mostly include biographies: I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, and Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama.

A trip to her parents’ native Guyana two years ago inspired the fourth grader to write her tome, according to the News