GREENSBORO, N.C. — A Greensboro woman is on a mission to make sure kids of color see themselves represented in children's books.
Lakisha Tucker published her first children's book "I Just Want to be ME!" in 2017 after her daughter came home from school one day saying kids at school said her natural hair was too big.
"Once we established that this isn't correct, you can be who you are, that your natural hair is absolutely beautiful, then I began to pray about how do I not only teach my child but how do I teach other children that have natural hair to I embrace who they are? Because sometimes your edges don't lay down," Tucker said.
Data collected from the Cooperative Children's Book Center shows just about 12 percent of all kid's books published in 2019 feature main characters who are black.
Tucker wants to change that. So she wrote her second book "Daleeia's Oh No Second Grade!"
She plans to release her third book "The Adventures of Kiran and Kovu", a story about a young Black boy and his dog next month.
"At least they can look down at the book and say you know what someone in this book looks like me. They look like my sibling, my cousins, my nieces, my nephews. Someone looks like we look," Tucker said "So I think that representation is very very important especially in 2021 when you think about equity and how far we've come and how far we have to go."
As with her first two books, Tucker plans to give out some copies to kids in the community.
They are also available for purchase on Amazon.
If you'd like to contact Tucker you can email her at 50generationsllc@gmail.com.