Crowning Glory: A Celebration of Black Hair

Celebrate the beauty of Black hair creations through the rhyming text and vibrant collage art of lauded Coretta Scott King Award winners Carole Boston Weatherford and Ekua Holmes.

Our hair is a lioness, born to be wild.
We pride ourselves on flair and style.

Cornrows forming complex patterns. Shells and beads on boxy braids. A flowery 'fro that's wash and go. A regal pouf that scrapes the sky. Black hair styles embody beauty and loving ritual, culture and community, expression and strength, patience and boundless creativity. Carole Boston Weatherford and Ekua Holmes bring this array of gorgeous hair designs--and the individuals who wear them--to bold and powerful life. Readers curious to know more can find an author's note about the five Black women who made history in 2019 as title holders of five major beauty pageants, as well as a glossary describing some twenty hair styles (from Afro to updo) and other terms related to the glory of Black hair.

Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Publisher: Candlewick Press (MA)
Published: 09/03/2024
Pages: 32
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 11.60h x 9.90w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9780763697945
Audience: Ages 9-12


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2024
Publishers Weekly 08/19/2024
Booklist 09/01/2024 pg. 59
School Library Journal 09/27/2024 pg. 1
Hornbook Guide to Children 07/01/2024 - Recommended, Satisfactory

About the Author
Carole Boston Weatherford, a New York Times best-selling author and poet, was named the 2025 Children's Literature Legacy Award winner. She was also named the 2019 Washington Post Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award winner. Her numerous books for children include the Newbery Honor Book Box: Henry Box Brown Mails Himself to Freedom, illustrated by Michele Wood; the Coretta Scott King Author Award winner Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre, illustrated by Floyd Cooper; the Robert F. Sibert Honor Book Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, illustrated by Ekua Holmes; and the critically acclaimed Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library and Outspoken: Paul Robeson, Ahead of His Time, both illustrated by Eric Velasquez. Carole Boston Weatherford lives in Maryland.

Ekua Holmes is the illustrator of numerous books for children, including Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement by Carole Boston Weatherford, for which she received several awards, including a Caldecott Honor, the John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor; Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets by Kwame Alexander, Chris Colderley, and Marjory Wentworth, for which she received the 2018 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award; The Stuff of Stars by Marion Dane Bauer, for which she received the 2019 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award; and the critically acclaimed Hope Is an Arrow: The Story of Lebanese American Poet Kahlil Gibran by Cory McCarthy. Ekua Holmes lives in Boston.