Review: Lily and the Magic Comb by VV Brown, illustrated by Kate Hazell

Lily's birthday gift from Mum is just a fancy wide-toothed comb. But when she uses it to detangle her brown curls she, suddenly, imagines herself transported to outer space, dancing on planets, racing against rockets, and whizzing down slides made of rainbows.

There are, already, a few picture books celebrating Black hair, but this latest beautifully finished debut from musician VV Brown adds a fun, fresh, and magical element to everyday haircare stories. 

Brown wrote the book due to concerns about the lack of diverse literature for her dual-heritage children. And what she achieves, here, is a sense of playfulness, freedom, and imagination less often attributed to young Black characters, with a nod to an Afro hair-combing tradition steeped in Black history.  

Reading about Lily and her empowering comb will undoubtedly boost children's self-esteem and encourage them to follow their dreams whatever their ethnicity or gender. I enjoyed the spread where Lily imagines various careers including the traditionally male-dominated fields of weightlifting, flying planes, and science. Lily's whirlwind space adventure could have, perhaps, been afforded a few more pages as it seemed to end as quickly as it began. 

With its highly irregular rhyme and meter, this text is most suited to shared reading at home. Young children could predict Lily's birthday gift and where she will travel to with her comb. Afterwards, they could draw and talk about made-up magical adventures, using their imaginations to extend the original story. If you had Lily's magic comb, which amazing place would you travel to next? How will you get there? What would you see there? What would you do there? 

The text also provides opportunities for hands-on activities. Children might enjoy comb painting, making rainbows or 'slimy cakes' with home-made 'slime'. The home corner could be kitted out with different types/sizes of hair grooming equipment: Afro picks, twist sponge brushes, empty and clean hair-grease containers, hairnets/nightcaps, and headwraps so children can explore and create their own narratives.

I adored illustrator Kate Hazell's powerful central spread with Lily's brown-skinned face taking up the entire space from edge and edge. Hazell's eye-catching kaleidoscopic scenes are full of energy, and evoke that feeling of being in the middle of a quirky dream. Her attention to detail over the variation in Lily's hair-curl pattern is also fabulous.  

This engaging, positive story encourages children, especially Black girls, to be proud of their natural hair, and of who they are. And in an age where discrimination against Black British schoolchildren with Afro hair is still prevalent, the more books we have like this, the better! 

Note for parents: Read about the Halo Code, a set of guidelines drawn up by a collective of 30 Black students to guard against Afro hair discrimination in the UK (halocollective.co.uk).

All the Black children's books that I review are checked against my Jericho Benchmark.