Light Legacy Books (LLB) is a children’s publishing house dedicated to bringing to light the stories of little-known heroes from across the globe.

Light Legacy Books’ core belief is that change comes through heartwork and that heartwork requires humility, knowledge, and action. This combination should drive education, community building, and character transformation.

Light Legacy Books seeks to find ways to spread light through books, classes, training, and workshops

Rukayat Yakub

Rukayat Yakub is a certified Montessori Elementary teacher and studied Arabic and traditional Islamic sciences in the UK, Morocco, Spain, Mauritania, and the United States.

She is a researcher, trainer, and author of the award-winning activity book Ahmadu Bamba: Sage of Senegal. In 2020 she expanded Light Legacy Books into the delivery of online children’s classes.

Rukayat embraces the spiritual journey that motherhood provides So much of the work she does and materials she has developed stems from conversations with her children, and her desire to share her insights with them and with children across the globe.

As a teacher, I noticed a gap in the non-fiction offerings for children. The missing stories of real-life Muslim heroes! So, I wrote passages about these men and women and used them with my students I saw the shift in their interest in Social Studies when I integrated ELA, Reading, Writing, and Muslim History into their lessons. In the classroom, I saw the excitement of students when reading stories with little-known characters, who they could identify with, making history! They really felt like they had a place in building the world we now know. That they were players not just spectators.

As a student of the Sirah (the study of the life of the Blessed Prophet), I am in awe of the way the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him peace taught us to care, to act, to serve, and to strive to be better. In studying and teaching Sirah and Shamail (prophetic character) I developed Cultivating Transformative Communities, a practical way to infuse safety, respect, and love into our classrooms and Muslim ran organizations.

Looking deeper at the Blessed Prophet’s character I saw a blueprint for helping people identify and divest from their biases. This study led to the development of HeartWork: working on ourselves so we bring sound hearts to our interaction with people especially people who are marginalized in society. In HeartWork we look at the ailments of the heart, systemic injustices, bias, and racism in society. Our goal in this training is to rid our hearts of destructive patterns and take on prophetic models in our interactions with everyone.