Hair Love Library Lessons
Hi, friends! We’re all so excited that Hair Love won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film!
If you’re part of our Learning Librarians Facebook group, you may have seen these Hair Love library lessons shared there, by our positive and helpful community! Hair Love is a picture book, (affiliate link) written by former NFL wide receiver Matthew Cherry, and illustrated by New York Times bestselling illustrator Vashti Harrison.
The picture book story is also a similar animated short (7 minutes) video, which you can view here on YouTube.
Compare and Contrast Lesson Plan
Read the book with your students, then watch the short film. Compare and contrast the book and film, either aloud as a whole group, sharing with a partner, or on a written Venn diagram. Students can write or talk about which ending they prefer and why.
You can also compare and contrast Hair Love with Newbery Honor book Crown (affiliate link), a book about African-American hair from a boy’s perspective.
Talk About Love
Discuss how different characters showed love in the book and/or film. Discuss what actions your students can take to show love to someone in their lives. Have students make cards for someone who shows love to them. All you need is construction paper and markers, but you can add some fun stickers, too!
Similes and Metaphors
Students can write and illustrate a simile or metaphor that could have been used in narration of the film. You can read a few lines from My Hair is a Garden (affiliate link) to help them get started.
Inference and Prediction Lessons
Students can make inferences and predictions as you read the Hair Love picture book or watch and pause the short film. What can you infer when the main character is trying to figure out how to style her hair by herself? What can you infer by the heart on the calendar? How do you predict her hair will turn out?
Books as Windows and Mirrors
Explain to students that, just like a mirror reflects you, books can be mirrors that reflect things you know and experience. Just like a window lets you see outside, a window book lets you learn about something outside of your own life and experience. Ask students to share an example of a book they’ve read that was a window or mirror.
Read and Share Hair Love
This celebration of black hair is an important book to read and share with your students. All of your students deserve to see themselves and their families represented in your school library’s picture book collection. I hope these Hair Love library lessons will help your students enjoy and learn from this lovely picture book!
I absolutely love how you have made the connection that a book could be a source of new information to learn, or you can also use books as a way to create meaningful connections to your own life and experiences. This is a wonderful way of thinking regarding reading. It does not always have to be about learning something new, it can definitely be used to know that there are connections to your experiences and others and you are not alone.