Children's Picture Book Database at Miami University

A young Mali girl, Yatandou, is eight years old and sits with women in her village for three hours to pound sticks against the millet kernels to make one day's food. Yatandou takes her goat to graze. Her brother, Madou, goes into the thickets to bring back another goat lost from the village. He gets thorns on his clothes which Yatandou pulls off. Madou and their father work the onion fields in the scorching heat and blowing red sand. Mother makes two journeys to the well each day -- morning and night. On the eve of getting a machine to grind millet in the village, a woman comes from the city to teach the girls and the women. Father complains that the women will become idle. But Madou climbs the rocks and brings home a bag of bats from the caves. Mother makes bat stew for dinner, and Father is happy.

The hair of Black people has many ways to describe it. You can part hair, pack hair, and call it curly, kinky, and coarse. Hair can be pinned, twisted, woven, and waved. Whether the hair is in corn rows, ponytails, or naturally long or short, the hair of black people is beautiful.