12-03-2025
Acclaimed children's book author visits with students at Peoria Public Library
PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — The author of children's books like I Love My Hair and The Me I Choose to Be visited the Peoria Public Library Lincoln Branch to read to local students.
Tuesday morning, students from Peoria Public Schools listened to Natasha Tarpley read her most recently published book, Keyana Loves School. During the visit, she also answered the students' most pressing questions about what it's like being a children's author.
Tarpley said her books focus on African American children. Through her books she tries to celebrate all the things that make a person unique. Something that she thinks is important is writing joyful stories where black children can see themselves reflected in her work.
'I think it's important because there are so many messages in our society positions, African Americans in particular, in pretty negative ways and limited ways,' Tarpley said. 'I think kids absorb that, and they think about that and they kind of take that in, and they allow that to define in some ways who they are. And so my work for me is about creating a more expansive view, a more realistic view of and a nuanced view of what black life and culture is.'
During her speech, she stressed to children how authors use their imagination and draw from their own lives to create fantastical stories. Some advice she had for her readers was to practice your craft, be passionate about your work, and don't worry about the end result.
Sometimes an author can touch people's lives in unexpected ways. Tarpley recalled a time when a mother gave her daughter I Love My Hair to help her daughter through her cancer treatment.
'She gave her I Love My Hair,' Tarpley said, 'As her hair was starting to grow back. So that just stayed with me forever. It was just such a wonderful, touching thing that my book could play a role in that story.'
Natasha Tarpley's latest book, Keyana Loves School is available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and your local library.
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