HAIR THAT TELLS STORIES
VALUING CURLS IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Keywords:
children's literature, anti-racist education, school libraryAbstract
Afro-Brazilian children’s literature constitutes a powerful resource for cultural mediation and critical racial literacy in school libraries. This study aims to present two children’s literature works — O mundo no black power de Tayó (2013), by Kiusam de Oliveira, and A Rainha Dandara e a beleza dos cabelos crespos (2022), by Dayse Cabral de Moura — as instruments for ethnic-racial information mediation in the school library. The research, exploratory in nature and qualitative in approach, adopted documentary and bibliographic analysis as methodological procedures, articulating the concepts of critical racial literacy, body-hair as language, and the library as a space of resistance. The results indicate that both works operate through a discourse of resignification of curly hair, transforming it from a target of stigmatization into a symbol of ancestry, beauty, and power. The illustrations and narratives reinforce the potential of children’s literature in constructing a positive self-image and deconstructing racist stereotypes. It is concluded that the qualified presence of these works in school collections, along with their planned mediation by librarians, are indispensable strategies for anti-racist education, as advocated by Laws 10.639/2003 and 11.645/2008.