Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship

Reviewed by: Jan Hamilton - Little Dolphin School, Scarborough, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: September 3, 2018

Review

Can I Touch Your Hair... is a true collaborative of authors and illustrators. Written by two newly acquainted email friends and illustrated by a couple the reader benefits from four perspectives. When a teacher assigns a poetry project and tells her students to pick a partner, Charles and Irene find themselves paired. Although not friends they work together learning about each other as the project and their friendship develops. The teacher instructs the class to write about anything "It's not black and white". That statement seems to lead readers to the purpose of the text, one student is white and the other black. In reality this could be any two students who learn to work together, sharing their different perspectives and background. The illustrators show Irene and Charles at home, in church, on the playground as well as on the beach. The artwork is somewhat abstract and several mediums are used to illustrate the story in poetry. Collage provides visual interest but it is the poems that soar. Add this to intermediate schools and put a copy on public library shelves.

Overall Book Score: very good