People would come back with five or six responses.” “The people at the picnic were answering back as he talked,” Herron said. “People were sitting around at the birthday picnic and he said to me, ‘Carol you sure do got that nappy hair, don’t you?’ It was at a birthday picnic in July that the book took root. One summer, she returned home just to capture her uncle’s stories. She was prompted, she said, by her Uncle Richard’s storytelling, and particularly his tales about hair. The range of Herron’s expertise and literary accomplishment and her commitment as a public scholar to humanities work make her ideal for this new ASU affiliation.Ī specialist in epic literature, Herron wrote “Nappy Hair” when she was a professor at Harvard University to illustrate how the African tradition of call and response “can be compared to the great oral traditions of ancient Greeks and other cultures.” The project will sponsor humanities-centered activities, programs and events at ASU’s four campuses, and highlight community events that focus on humanities research and humanist practice. Project Humanities is a universitywide initiative with the goal of showing the interactions among humanities and other areas of scholarship and human endeavor.

Herron, who will be a Project Humanities Visiting Scholar at ASU during the 2011-2012 academic year, will make her first appearance in Tempe, Oct. The book begins with the telling of a story by Uncle Mordecai at a backyard picnic:īrenda, you sure do got some nappy hair on your head, don’t you?īut she sure, Lord, got some nappy hair on her head.Īnd I’m gonna tell y’all how she came up with all this nappy hair.Īn act of God that came straight through Africa. To fully enjoy “Nappy Hair,” it should be read by aloud by two people – one to read the call and one to read the response. “That’s why I wrote the book – many people think I wrote the book because I was concerned about hair.” Download Full Image “It’s about the African-American tradition of call and response,” Herron said from her home in Washington, D.C. A must for reading aloud, Nappy Hair is a meaningful and completely captivating reading experience.When Carolivia Herron wrote a children’s book about nappy hair, she didn’t intend it to be just a book about locks. Joe Cepeda's colors are ripe but youthful, sweet but bold-with lots of kid appeal. Soulful, funny, full of rhythm, and bursting with family pride, Nappy Hair is accessible to people of all ages. The family delights in poking gentle fun with their hilarious descriptions, all the time discovering the beauty and meaning of Brenda's hair. In a unique and vibrant picture book that uses the African-American call-and-response tradition, a family talks back and forth about adorable Brenda's hair-it's the nappiest, the curliest, the twistiest hair in the whole family.

You sure do got some nappy hair on your head, don't you? Well.

Nappy hair by carolivia herron