Kamala and Maya's Big Idea - Meena Harris
This is such an uplifting, sweet, and inspiring book. I have two daughters who are very close to each other in age, and we have been stuck at home for the most part since March 2020, in an apartment without a back yard. So they loved reading about two sisters who had the great idea of building a community garden and playground outside their own apartment building!
Based on a true story from her mother and aunt’s childhood, Meena Harris tells us about how Kamala and Maya organized their community into building a community garden and playground. Instead of taking no for an answer they think outside the box, and find solutions to each problem that arises, thanks to ideas from different people in the community. Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea teaches kids that it’s OK to have big dreams, and also that it’s OK to stumble on them, because once they get up and shake it off, they may find their footing again in a different light. It also teaches them that it is perfectly OK to ask for help, and that as a community we can all work together to make things better than they are. Kamala Harris is already an inspirational figure, and it’s great to see that in her childhood she was already inspiring others. It was the perfect opportunity for me to explain who Kamala Harris is to my girls in a way that they understood, and they could also one day do something like her (if they wanted to).
After I read this story to my girls the first time, and tucked them up in bed for the night, I found them reading through it again, snuggled up in the top bunk together. I wasn’t surprised when they started asking me how one builds a slide…