It’s not just people she needs to consider - in her quest to escape the hair-touchers she has to dodge mermaids and an octopus underwater, and even a bedazzled dragon who spies Aria in the tallest of castle towers and declares, “Girl, your hair is FIERCE!”Īvoiding the matter won’t help, so Aria has to learn how to speak up for herself in Miller’s humorous yet necessary take on how to set personal boundaries. In writer-illustrator Sharee Miller’s “Don’t Touch My Hair!” (Little, Brown, $17.99), young Aria goes to great lengths to avoid confrontations with well-meaning strangers who want to feel her natural locks. What she doesn’t like is when folks touch it without permission. It’s “soft and bouncy, and grows up toward the sun like a flower.” It’s a goal shared by BookPeople’s Modern First Library, which encompasses a broad range of titles and a blog series.įinish up your last bit of holiday shopping with these new books, peruse even more selections under the Modern First Library umbrella at /bookpeople-modern-first-library-sets and give the gift of a wider lens this holiday season.Īria loves her hair. The collaboration between the American-Statesman and BookPeople seeks to make your young readers’ picture-book shelves as diverse and inclusive as the world around them.

Avoiding bedtime in the most imaginative of ways, reaping the benefits of working both smart and hard, and learning how to set clear boundaries are the varied themes that make up this edition of Statesman Selects Kids.

No Small Potatoes by Tonya Bolden