Hairs/Pelitos by Sandra Cisneros is a beautiful bilingual book about a family – and their very different types of hair. (You might recognize these people from The House on Mango Street.) The vivid text and beautiful pictures are engaging and even young children will be able to relate to the different kinds of hair.

Happy to be Nappy by bell hooks is written in sing-song and lyrical prose and describes all sorts ways that hair is beautiful.  It uses words like “twisted,” “pleated,” “braided,” and phrases like “soft like cotton” and “full of frizz and fuzz.”

Since young children really like to think about themselves, studying these two books as a vehicle for comparing and contrasting will be immediately appealing to them. They will be able to compare/contrast the characters in the stories and themselves at the same time.  The books are rich with vocabulary that describe all sorts of hair lengths, styles, textures, and colors.  Your children will be able to find hair that is like theirs and different from theirs.

The opportunities for comparing and contrasting here (get it?) are endless.  Now set up a hair salon in your housekeeping area and expand the exploration further