Milestones: The Proudest Blue by S. K. Ali and Ibtihaj Muhammed

It's the first day hijab. Asiyah knows it. I know it.

We're sisters.

It's a beautiful, bright sunny day. Little sister Faizah is excited about her first day of school. She has a new backpack and new shoes that flash with every step. She is also excited that this is her big sister's first day to wear her beautiful blue hijab to school. To Faizah, her big sister seems like a princess. But as her sister waves goodbye and joins the sixth-graders, a girl in front of her turns around.

"What's that on your sister's head?" she whispers.

 "A scarf," I whisper. "A hijab," I add. I don't know why that came out a whisper. 

"Oh," she whispers.

Suddenly Faizah needs to hug her sister. She runs across the schoolyard to the door of the sixth-grade area.

"Are you excited?" I ask. "About the first day of hijab?"

Her sister responds with a big smile. Then some one laughs and points at Asiyah.

A boy shouts that he's going to pull that tablecloth off her head.

Now the day doesn't seem so bright. But when her sister picks her up from her classroom at the end of the day, Asiyah is still smiling. Asiyah is strong. Faizah tells her mother about what happened, and she smiles, too.

"Hurtful words belong only to those who use them."

Ibithaj Muhammed and A. K. Ali's best-selling The Proudest Blue: A Story of Hijab and Family (Little, Brown and Company, 2019) is a simple story of family unity and faithful religious practice, which for the proposed readership appropriately avoids the problems of diverse religious belief in a multicultural world in which tenets of one faith may violate the tenets of another, and instead stresses the need for respect of others' faith and practices in that world. Says Publishers Weekly, "This excellent story about identity, visibility, and confidence, touches on rites of passage, bonds between sisters, and bullying and is unapologetic in tackling misconceptions and demanding equality."

Bad Hair Day: Eva and Sadie and the Worst Haircut Ever by by Jeff Cohen

WHEN I FINISHED, I LOOKED DOWN AT THE PILE OF HAIR ON THE FLOOR...
AND THAT'S WHEN THINGS WENT TERRIBLY WRONG.

"SADIE, ARE YOU SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING?" ASKED EVA.

Standing in the bathroom with Mom's sewing scissors, with a pile of her little sister's blond curls around her feet, Sadie realizes that it might not have been a great idea to give Eva's wild hair a little trim.

It was wild. Eva's hair is lush and has grown down to her tush. It's whirly and twirly, hurly-burly, and way too curly. Her waves work their way out of Mom's tightest braids. Her curly mop escapes from hair thingies, bounces out of barrettes, overwhelms headbands, and brushing only makes it frizzier. Something clearly needed to happen. And Big Sis Sadie, in her sensible brown bob, thinks she knows just what Eva's coiffure calls for.

But now Sadie realizes that Eva's mane is more that she can manage.

SOME PARTS ARE SHORT, AND SOME PARTS ARE LONG.

"THIS IS BAD, BAD BAD!"

BUT EVA LIKES IT.

Sadie knows that she's crossed the haircut Rubicon at this point, in Jeff Cohen's new Eva and Sadie and the Worst Haircut EVER! (HarperCollins, 2014). The impromtu haircut (by sister, best friend, or selfie) is almost a rite of passage of childhood, and Jeff Cohen's comic account of Sadie's growing panic as she feverishly snips and snips to try to even out Eva's haircut, along with Elanna Evans' sympathetic illustrations of the big sister and her complicit little sister, makes for an easy-going finish to this all too common story. Pair this one with the boy-pleasing [ { THIS MONSTER NEEDS A HAIRCUT } ] by Barton, Bethany (AUTHOR) Jul-05-2012 [ Hardcover ] by Bethany Barton.