Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race Mistakes and Friendship by Irene Latham (review)

Poets Irene Latham and Charles Waters assume, respectively, the voices of a young white girl, Irene, and young Black boy, Charles, who are paired together for a poetry project. A series of over thirty poems follows them as they deal with each other and their classmates, negotiating points of friction both racial (Irene wants to play freeze dance with Shonda and her friends, who are Black; Charles wonders why the Jesus in his church is white) and personal (Charles is a motormouth while Irene is quiet). The poems appear in tandem pairs, their speakers differentiated by font, that relate to each other thematically, sometimes illuminating the commonality of the kids' experiences and sometimes operating in complementarity. The result is an unusually candid book for pre-YA kids about race and difference, allowing for the possibility of the mistakes (the word is right in the subtitle) but also a hopeful outcome as Irene and Charles find enrichment in their friendship. Though there's a touch of historical flavor at times (the authors base the poems on their 1980s childhoods), the underlying issues remain relevant in contemporary classrooms and playgrounds. The illustrations, acrylic, colored pencil, and collage, mostly focus on figures crisply edged against white space but vary the images with complexly layered colors. The art links each pair of poems further with compositions that echo and mirror each other (in the pair of church poems, for instance, congregations are viewed both from above and behind the pews). Kids will appreciate recognition of their challenges and the value of surmounting them, and in skilled hands this could prompt some useful curricular responses. Authors and illustrators both include notes about their inspirations and intentions.