KAIA-AND-THE-BIRTHDAY-KITES---Home

Kaia and the Birthday Kites

is a fictional story of a determined young girl's mission

to spend her birthday with the man she admires most, and for her dad to spend his birthday with the daughter he loves. Dad is an inmate at Jessup, a maximum security prison in the suburbs of Baltimore.

AUTHOR LARRY BRATT, now 64, is no stranger to correctional institutions. He's been serving time since 1981 and has been in the real Jessup Penitentiary since 2001. Larry has changed. He is no longer the man who, at a much younger age, committed a serious felony. Larry has pulled together the support and insights of his fellow inmates to launch and drive a hospice program for terminally ill prisoners, a children's book program that provides picture books to inmates with kids, and a gang intervention program that strategizes ways to encourage gangs to redirect their hunger for power into powerful actions for positive change in the communities where they live. Larry has won numerous awards and certificates of commendation. More than 350 of his articles and Op-Ed pieces, many addressing the issue of prison reform, have been published in major market newspapers like THE WASHINGTON POST and THE BALTIMORE SUN.