Controversy and Children’s Literature:
Author and Teacher Discuss Nappy Hair

New York teacher Ruth Sherman and Carolivia Herron, English professor and author of Nappy Hair, talk about ways to teach diversity and to use the book in the elementary school classroom. (photo BAS)

Author and English professor Carolivia Herron and New York City elementary school teacher Ruth Sherman spoke to a packed house March 13 in Harlen Adams Theatre about Herron's book Nappy Hair, the African American epic tradition, strategies for teaching about diversity, and the troubles and challenges that resulted from Sherman's use of Nappy Hair in her classroom several months ago.

First they involved the audience in a live reading of the story. "African American call and response means if you don't get an answer, you can't go on," Herron explained, leading off. Those assembled, many of them teachers and liberal studies students who had brought copies of the book, weren't about to let her down. The brightly illustrated book, which utilizes different font sizes, big for the call, smaller for the response, relies on a reading by two or more voices.

Sherman then recounted her ousting from Public School 75 in Brooklyn when some of the parents of her mostly black and Latino students protested that her use of Nappy Hair reinforced negative cultural stereotypes about their appearance. "Only one percent of the school was at [reading] level," said Sherman, explaining that she tried to involve parents in the struggle to help their children become better readers by regularly sending materials home that the family could read together.

Since her class loved Herron's book above all others Sherman photocopied pages from the book for the students' take-home folders.

At that point, according to Sherman, one parent, who had never come to a parent-teacher meeting or talked to Sherman about her classroom approach, took umbrage and enlisted a group of community members to demand that Sherman be fired. Stunned by the vigor of their objections, Sherman fell into a depression, and began, she said, to second-guess herself about nearly everything.

Although she has since transferred to a school in Queens, she is distressed that her former students might not understand the real reason for her departure. "Who's going to explain to those kids what happened?" she asked. The controversy, meanwhile, shows few signs of dying down. Herron said that a recent invitation to speak to parents and share her reasons for writing the book has since been withdrawn.

Herron and Sherman also talked about ways to use Nappy Hair in the elementary school classroom. Herron's lively description of her character Brenda's "nappiest, fuzziest, the most screwed up, squeezed up, knotted up" hair, said Sherman, can model the way students might employ chains of adjectives in writing their own stories. Herron has used the embedded blues lyrics of the tale to show students how they might construct their own blues songs. The two are writing a study guide that provides further ways a book like Nappy Hair might be used to teach about diversity.

Herron is currently meeting with her publisher to discuss which of her other children's books should come out next, and Sherman is working on a master's degree in elementary education while continuing to teach.

Sales of Nappy Hair, meanwhile, are robust.

BAS