“Melissa Parkington’s Beautiful, Beautiful Hair” is a children’s picture book that goes beyond just a cute story. This one made me sniffle.
Melissa has long, dark, shiny hair, and everywhere she goes, people compliment her on it. “Stunning!” they tell her. “Your hair is incredible!” Every night, when her dad tucked her into bed, he said, “Good night, Melissa of the Beautiful, Beautiful Hair.” She liked the praise, but after a while, she began to wish that people would notice her for something that she did, rather than something that grew out of her head.
She made a list of all the things she was good at. First on her list was basketball, so she decided to become an expert at it. After a lot of practice with the neighbor boy, she noticed that he was getting better while she really wasn’t. Maybe basketball wasn’t her thing. She tried drawing pictures that were good enough to be hung in a museum, but that didn’t work so well, either.
Perhaps she could be the kindest, nicest person in the world. She got right to work doing nice things for other people, and that made her feel good about herself. But she still wanted to do something more.
While at the mall one day, she saw a sign on a salon, advertising for people to donate their hair to children who had lost theirs. Immediately she knew what she wanted to do, and she asked her mother to take her inside. Her hair was cut and mailed to a place where it would be made into wigs for children. It was sad to see her hair go, but Melissa felt good inside, knowing that someone else would benefit from what she’d done.
And that night, when her father tucked her in, he said, “Good night, Melissa of the Beautiful, Beautiful Heart.”
(This book was published in 2006 by Boyd’s Mill Press and was illustrated by Suzanne Bloom.)
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