Why Is My Hair Curly? | Teacher's Guide

By Lakshmi Iyer · Illustrated by Niloufer Wadia · Red Panda / Westland, 2020

Recommended for ages 8–11 · Grades 3–5 · NCF Preparatory Stage

About This Guide

This guide supports classroom use of Why Is My Hair Curly?, a middle grade novel set between Chennai and Coimbatore, about Avantika, a ten-year-old Tamil girl adopted by her parents along with her younger brother Avnish. Across ten chapters, Avantika navigates teasing about her curly hair, questions about her birth mother, a friendship with a mysterious stranger in the park, and a family reconciliation that brings her estranged maternal grandmother home after years of silence.

The book works well as a whole-class read, a literature circle selection, or a library pick for identity-themed units. It pairs with American and Indian classroom frameworks, and its South Asian setting, Tamil cultural specificity, and adoption narrative fill a gap that most diverse-reads lists leave open.

This guide is structured in four parts: a thematic summary for teachers, chapter-spanning discussion questions, five classroom activities, and a full standards alignment for both CCSS (United States) and NCF 2023 (India).

Thematic Summary for Teachers

Five themes run through the book, each usable as a standalone discussion or essay topic.

Identity located in the body

Avantika’s hair is the story’s throughline, but hair stands in for something larger. She looks at her curls in the mirror and looks for herself. Amma, appa, and Avnish all have straight hair. Avantika is the only one in the family whose hair does not match theirs. Until she meets a stranger in the park whose curls are exactly like her own, and who eventually turns out to be her amma’s mother, a grandmother Avantika did not know she had. Students can trace how Avantika’s relationship to her hair changes across the ten chapters and how it ends somewhere more surprising than simple self-acceptance.

Adoption as an ordinary fact

Avantika and Avnish are adopted. This is stated openly in chapter one and remains part of the family’s texture throughout. The rava kesari tradition on their homecoming day. Avantika’s questions about her birth mother. The orphanage photographs amma keeps for her. The book treats adoption as a normal part of family life rather than a secret or a crisis. For classrooms with adopted students, or classrooms teaching about the diversity of family structures, this matter-of-fact treatment is the book’s greatest resource.

Teasing and the inner life

The cousins call Avantika “Medusa.” At school, kids put pencils through her hair and she has been called “Saibaba.” She looks up Medusa on her iPad and tries to decide if the comparison is meant as an insult or a compliment. The book gives teachers a natural entry point into conversations about verbal bullying, but more importantly about how children metabolize teasing privately. What they do with it when no adult is watching.

Intergenerational repair

Avantika’s amma had long hair as a child but was made to cut it. Paati was widowed young and raised amma alone. She cut amma’s hair not out of preference but because she was working and mornings were too short for braids. Amma never said she hated it. Paati only found out after amma went to college and read her old diaries. Across three generations, hair has carried feelings none of them said out loud. When paati tells Avantika this, and Avantika tells amma, and amma finally speaks to her own mother, each telling loosens something that has been stuck for years. This theme rewards close reading.

Estrangement and return

When amma chose appa, she did not include her mother in the decision. Hurt, paati left for another city and stayed away for years. She shows up in the park where Rukmini akka takes the children after school. She watches her grandchildren from a distance. She finds an opening through Avantika’s curls. Students ready for more serious material can explore how families sometimes break in ways a child did not cause and cannot fix. And how the smallest act, a letter passed from child to stranger, a doorbell ringing at dinnertime, can still change what has looked unchangeable for years.

Discussion Questions

Organized in three tiers. Tier 1 checks comprehension. Tier 2 develops inference and close reading. Tier 3 invites personal and cross-textual connection. Choose across tiers based on group level.

Tier 1: Comprehension

Who are Avantika’s immediate family members, and how did she and Avnish come to be part of the family?
Why does Avantika dislike her curly hair at the beginning of the book?
Who is Rukmini akka, and what role does she play in Avantika and Avnish’s daily life?
What is the “homecoming day” tradition in Avantika’s family, and what dish does amma make?
Who is the mysterious paati Avantika meets in the park, and what does Avantika eventually learn about her?

Tier 2: Close Reading and Inference

Re-read the passenger chart scene in Chapter 1. Why do you think Avantika loves reading these charts? What does this tell us about her as a person?
Avantika’s cousins call her “Medusa.” Instead of telling her parents, she looks the name up on her iPad. Why do you think she keeps it to herself? What are the different ways a child might respond to being teased?
The book uses Tamil words like paati, thatha, chithappa, rava kesari, and kaapi without translating them in footnotes. Find three of these words in the text and write what you learned about their meaning from how they appear in the story. Why do you think the author chose this approach?
Avantika wonders more than once whether her birth mother had curly hair like hers. What does this tell us about the questions adopted children might carry, even when they have a loving family?
Compare how amma and paati each talk to Avantika about her hair. How does paati’s story about amma’s own childhood change what Avantika understands about her mother?
When Avantika finally learns that the mysterious paati in the park is amma’s own mother, she says: “Why did we miss out on knowing her for all these years? It’s not fair, Amma.” What does this line tell us about how children can name things that adults struggle to name themselves?

Tier 3: Personal Connection and Extension

Avantika gives a speech to her class near the end of the book: “Whether curly, unruly, messy or gorgeous… this is what I have. This is who I am.” Write about something about yourself that took you a long time to accept. You do not have to share what you write.
Paati tells Avantika that if amma had told her how she felt about her hair as a child, she might have let her grow it. Is there something you wish someone in your family knew about you? How might you tell them?
The book is set in Chennai and Coimbatore. What did you learn about life in these cities that you did not know before? What questions do you still have?
The cousins use the name “Medusa” to tease Avantika. Look up the Greek myth of Medusa. Is Medusa a villain in the original story, or is the story more complicated? How does retelling change who a character becomes?
If you were writing a sequel to this book, what would you want to happen to Avantika next? What about to Avnish, whose story the book does not tell as fully?

Classroom Activities

Five activities, each designed for a single class period (45–60 minutes) with optional extensions.

Activity 1: A Sensitive Family Tree

Skills: Character analysis, visual organization, classroom empathy
Time: 45 minutes
Materials: Large paper, colored pencils

Before starting, acknowledge aloud that family trees can look many different ways, and that all versions are welcome in the classroom. Ask students to map Avantika’s family using any structure they choose: branches, circles, overlapping rings. They should include amma, appa, Avnish, Saraswathy paati (amma’s mother), thatha (appa’s father), chithappa, chithi, Vishnu, Visruth, and any other family members named in the book. Students should note which relationships are by birth, which are by adoption, and which are by extended-family closeness. Ask them to also note the relationships that have been interrupted and later repaired. Discuss how different structures show different truths about the same family.

Extension: Invite students to map a family they know, their own, a friend’s, or a family from another book. Make clear that any and all family shapes are equally valid. No presentations required; this can be private work.

Activity 2: Close Reading the “Medusa” Scene

Skills: Close reading, inference, figurative language
Time: 50 minutes
Materials: Photocopy of Chapter 1 passages, myth handout

Distribute the passage in which Avantika’s cousins call her “Medusa” and she looks the name up. Pair students to annotate: What does Avantika actually feel? How can you tell? What does the author show us, rather than tell us? Then provide a short handout on the Medusa myth (the original Greek telling is more tragic than the simplified “monster” version). Students rewrite the passage from the point of view of one of the cousins. What might the cousin have been thinking? Does the cousin know he is hurting her?

Extension: Students write a letter from adult-Avantika back to ten-year-old-Avantika about the Medusa moment.

Activity 3: The Hair Observation Notebook

Skills: Observation, descriptive writing, science-language crossover
Time: 60 minutes over two sessions
Materials: Notebook pages, mirrors (optional)

Day one: students brainstorm and list every word they can think of to describe hair: curly, straight, wavy, fine, thick, coarse, braided, frizzy, shiny, coily, limp, tangled. No adjectives are better than others. Day two: students write a descriptive paragraph about someone’s hair: their own, a family member’s, a friend’s, or a fictional character’s. The paragraph must avoid evaluative words like “pretty” or “ugly.” Focus on texture, behavior, and the story the hair tells.

Extension: Read Matthew A. Cherry’s Hair Love or Natasha Anastasia Tarpley’s I Love My Hair! as a companion text. Compare how hair is described across the three books.

Activity 4: Writing a Homecoming Day

Skills: Narrative writing, cultural literacy, classroom community
Time: 60 minutes
Materials: Writing paper

In Avantika’s family, homecoming day is celebrated each year with rava kesari. Students research or invent a tradition that marks an important day in a family. It could be the day a baby came home from the hospital, the day a family moved to a new city, the day a grandparent immigrated, the day a pet joined the family, or the day a child was officially welcomed into a new school. Students write a short narrative describing one year’s celebration: who is there, what food is made, what is said, what is remembered.

Activity 5: The Letter Amma Never Sent

Skills: Perspective-taking, letter writing, thematic synthesis
Time: 45 minutes

Paati tells Avantika that amma wrote in a diary about how much she hated cutting her hair, and that paati only discovered this after her daughter had gone to college. Students write the letter young amma might have written to her own paati as a child, the one she never actually sent. Discuss as a class: what stops us from telling the people closest to us how we really feel? What might we lose by not telling them?

Standards Alignment

Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Grades 3–5

Reading: Literature

RL.3.3 / RL.4.3 / RL.5.3 Describe characters and how their traits, motivations, or feelings drive the action (applies to tracking Avantika’s changing relationship with her hair and with Saraswathy paati).
RL.3.6 / RL.4.6 / RL.5.6 Distinguish own point of view from that of the narrator or characters (Tier 2 questions, particularly the “Medusa” scene).
RL.3.7 / RL.5.7 Analyze how illustrations contribute to meaning (Niloufer Wadia’s illustrations).
RL.3.9 / RL.4.9 / RL.5.9 Compare and contrast themes across stories (pairs with Hair Love, I Love My Hair!, Bringing Asha Home).

Writing

W.3.3 / W.4.3 / W.5.3 Write narratives with effective technique and descriptive detail (Activities 4 and 5).
W.3.1 / W.4.1 / W.5.1 Write opinion pieces with supporting reasons (Tier 3 discussion extensions).

Speaking & Listening

SL.3.1 / SL.4.1 / SL.5.1 Engage effectively in collaborative discussion (all Tier 2 and Tier 3 questions).

NCF 2023, Preparatory Stage (Grades 3–5, Ages 8–11)

Curricular Goal: Language Education

Why Is My Hair Curly? aligns with Preparatory Stage learning outcomes in language education, particularly:

Reading comprehension of age-appropriate literary texts in English with attention to theme, character, and setting.
Oral and written expression drawing on the student’s own experience in dialogue with a literary text.
Appreciation of literary heritage, including contemporary Indian writing in English. The book is set in Chennai and Coimbatore, uses Tamil cultural terms naturally, and locates Indian childhood in Indian spaces rather than filtering it through a Western frame.
Multilingual literacy. The book models how multiple languages can share a single sentence, supporting NCF 2023’s emphasis on the three-language formula and regional linguistic pride.

Curricular Goal: Cultural Identity and Diversity

The book supports NCF 2023’s stated goal of fostering respect for diversity and inclusivity through literature. Classroom discussion can explore:

Tamil cultural practices (homecoming day, paati’s oiling and braiding, kaapi rituals) as normal and valuable, not exotic.
Adoption within an Indian family as an ordinary configuration of love.
Different physical traits within the same family as a starting point for conversations about belonging that is not based on resemblance.
Estrangement and reconciliation within extended families as something children perceive and sometimes help repair.

Curricular Goal: Socio-Emotional Learning

Aligned with NCF 2023’s emphasis on Panchakosha Vikas (holistic development), particularly the emotional and social domains. Avantika’s journey from teasing to self-understanding, and her role in bringing her maternal grandmother back into the family, model emotional vocabulary and agency students can discuss and adapt.

A Note from the Author

Thank you for bringing Why Is My Hair Curly? into your classroom. This was my first book, and it came from a simple wish to see girls like my daughters on the shelves of bookstores and school libraries. Girls whose hair does not fit the norm, whose families were made in unexpected ways, whose Tamil words did not need to be translated to be loved.

If you use this guide in your classroom, I would love to hear about it. Student letters, classroom photos (with permission), discussion insights. All of it reaches me at the contact link on my website. I also offer occasional virtual classroom visits.

A companion middle grade novel, Why Is My Skin Brown? (Red Panda/Westland), arrives July 2026. Its free Teacher’s Guide is already available.

Lakshmi Iyer

This guide may be reproduced freely for classroom use. Please do not modify or redistribute commercially.

Why Is My Hair Curly? Teacher’s Guide