The man with small hair by Jane Jolly and Andrew Joyner
Hardie Grant Egmont, 2018. ISBN: 9781742977584.
The man with small hair loves his small hair. He also loves his
short pants, zing-a-ding boots and clickety-clackety beads. He
cartwheels with joy and bursts into song when he wears them. But the
man with small hair is the only person who wears his hair small, and
no one else has colourful boots or musical beads either. He decides
to hide the things that make him happy in order to blend in with the
crowd. Until one day he looks in the mirror and doesn't recognise
the man staring back at him.
Jane Jolly has written a particularly pertinent story about being
brave and confident enough to walk to the beat of your own drum,
rather than the tune that someone else is piping for you. Sadly, in
a world that wants to celebrate individuality and relies on
creativity and lateral thinking to solve its problems, conformity
seems to be the name of the game and those who dare to be different
are teased, bullied and shunned. So the man who prefers his hair
short, and indeed loves it because he likes the feel of the prickly
bristles and the funny shadows they make, hides behind disguises
that make him seem like all the others on the outside, makes himself
one of the crowd who move along in a grey flock, lacking the
confidence to express who he really is.
Andrew Joyner's choice of a predominantly grey palette for the start
of the story emphasises the monotonous, monochromatic world that the
man inhabits underlining what a dismal place a one-look-fits-all
environment can be But when the man lets his real self shine
through, then there is a great burst of colour - as bright as his
new found confidence. Not only does the story give the inner person
permission to be themselves, but perhaps when they do they will
inspire others to discard their masks and show the world their true
colours. And even if it is a world of school uniforms there is
always some how that we can let ourselves shine.
An excellent story to start off the mindfulness curriculum for the
school year. Teaching
notes are available.
Barbara Braxton