Black People Hair

A Ten-Page Story to Read and Color

Ages 4–9 · Black Coloring Books

Ages 4–9 · Heritage · Self-love · Family

Black People Hair

A Ten-Page Story to Read and Color

It is wash day on Dunbar Street, and Amara has decided she hates her hair. So her grandmother sets down the comb, ties on her shoes, and walks her up the block — past the barber shaping a fade like a sculptor, past the porch where nine hours of braiding turn into rivers, past an uncle with ten years of locs down his back. Ten rhyming pages, ten detailed line drawings, and one girl who finds out the thing on her head is a crown her people made by hand.

Story spine: Wash day · “I wish it were different” · A walk up the block · The crown · Monday morning
Who you're coloring: Amara Boyd, seven years old, deep brown skin and a gap-toothed grin, two big afro puffs at the start and beaded cornrows by the end, denim pinafore, striped socks, well-loved sneakers. Her grandmother wears glasses, gold hoops, an apron, and a bright headwrap over silver coils.

14 pages · 8.5 × 11 PDF · cover, story pages and a blank plaque to finish

Read it first — free

All ten pages

On Saturday mornings the kitchen smells sweet,

With a comb and a jar and a chair by Gran's feet.

Amara sits down with her puffs standing high —

It's wash day on Dunbar, and combs make her cry.

Coloring page of Amara sitting in a kitchen chair between her grandmother's knees on wash day

“It's too thick,” says Amara. “It tangles. It hurts.

And it won't lie down flat like the girls' at the church.”

She tugs on a curl and she lets it spring free.

“I wish I had somebody's hair. Not on me.”

Coloring page of Amara frowning with her arms crossed, stretching one curl out so it springs back

Gran set down the comb and she turned off the pot.

“Come walk with me, baby. You've forgotten a lot.

That hair is a story some hands wrote for you.

Shoes on,” said her grandmother. “Come see it true.”

Coloring page of Amara and her grandmother stepping out the screen door onto a street of row houses

First stop was the shop where Mr. Ellis cuts hair,

Where the clippers hum low and the mirrors don't glare.

He shaped a boy's fade like a sculptor on stone.

“That's art,” whispered Gran. “And that art is our own.”

Coloring page of a barber shaping a boy's fade while Amara and her grandmother watch from the doorway

Then Miss Yvette, out on her porch in the shade,

Parted rows into rivers and braided and laid

Them in patterns like fields you'd see flying up high.

Nine hours of hands, and the hours went by.

Coloring page of a woman braiding intricate cornrows into a girl's hair on a shaded front porch

Then Uncle June came with his locs to his waist,

Ten years of them growing — no hurry, no haste.

“Each one is a season,” he said with a grin.

“They started as coils that I twisted back in.”

Coloring page of a man with long locs crouching to show Amara one of them while her grandmother smiles

Cousin Rae wore her knots in eight rows like a crown.

Aunt Kim's afro went up and refused to come down.

Neesha's twists were tied back in a scarf, gold and blue.

“Not one of them's copied,” said Gran. “Neither you.”

Coloring page of a backyard cookout where four women wear Bantu knots, an afro, twists and a puff

Back home, Gran unwrapped the bright cloth from her head —

Silver coils, soft as smoke — and she smiled as she said,

“My mother wrapped mine on a porch just like this,

And her mother wrapped hers. That's a line you can't miss.”

Coloring page of Amara's grandmother unwrapping her headwrap in the living room beside an old family photograph

Amara climbed back in the chair, sitting tall.

“Do the rows,” she said. “Beads on the ends of them all.”

Gran greased up her scalp and she parted and wound

Till a map of a city sat perfectly round.

Coloring page of Amara sitting happily while her grandmother parts and braids curving cornrows with beads

On Monday Amara walked in with her beads

Clicking soft when she moved, like a breeze in the trees.

“Who did that?” asked her classmates. She grinned. “That's my Gran.

It's a crown, and it's mine.” — Now draw yours. You can.