Chicago author Natasha Anastasia Tarpley’s children’s books touch on themes of self-love, familial bonds and friendship. She’s known for writing empowering messages for Black children with titles such as I Love My Hair!, The Me I Choose To Be and Bippity Bop Barbershop.

Her latest book, Keyana Loves Her Friend, is the second in the series featuring the energetic Keyana McGee. The first installment was called Keyana Loves Her Family. This time around, she’s planning an epic sleepover party for her best friend Nia who moved away. But once the girls are together, they realize they’ve changed.

This new book deals with navigating disappointment and changes in friendship. It’s a sweet tale that provides an important framework for kids modeling clear communication. It also aims to help parents help their kids articulate their feelings and learn to collaborate.

The Keyana series is illustrated by Indianapolis-based Charnelle Pinkney Barlow. It features bright colors and drawings meant to be in Keyana’s own hand.

Below are a few questions and answers from Reset’s conversation with Natasha Tarpley. They have been edited for clarity and length.

Talk to us about the idea for the series.

So when I was growing up…I didn’t see a whole lot of books out there that featured kids who look like me. That’s gotten a whole lot better. But you know, part of my yearning as a kid was not only to see books with characters who look like me, but also characters whose experiences reflected the kinds of things that were going on in my family. I was lucky enough to have a really cool childhood. My sisters and my brother and I, we would do all kinds of fun stuff. And so for this series, I really wanted to bring that just fun, light family celebration energy out into the world.

We as adults have tense moments all the time with friends and family. You don’t really see kids books about that though. Why did you choose to tackle this topic?

Friends are so important when you’re a kid. And I just remember little moments when I was growing up when I was really close to my friends and then little things would happen. Like they wouldn’t want to play the same game that I wanted to play or we started liking slightly different ways of dressing or things like that. I wanted to give some space to that and to acknowledge that just because you have these moments where things aren’t exactly the same, that doesn’t mean that your friendship is not intact. That could mean that your friendship is growing as you guys are able to kind of acknowledge the ways that you’re changing and really celebrate that.

You hold space for her disappointment as well. And I thought it was interesting that you have the adults, the parents intervene. Why did you make that choice?

I mean, kids can’t solve all of the problems on their own. And I think a parent who has gone through this, who has had these kinds of experiences can guide and offer support to a child and not necessarily tell them the answer, but acknowledge the feeling as you said, holding space for that feeling of disappointment. Of uncertainty. And just providing a safe space for them to explore those feelings and offer some ideas about how they might move forward.

And I wanted kids to in this series really explore and celebrate and believe in their big ideas. But also be comfortable with this idea of change or that the creative process is one that is not always linear. It’s not that you have an idea and then the idea comes to fruition and that’s the end of the story. There can be detours. You can change your mind about things. And so I want the series overall to be about that process too and not giving up on the ideas that you have just because they may not work out in the way that you anticipate initially.

I’m curious how you decide what might make a good series versus a one-off title.

The Keyana series was definitely a series that I pitched as a series. There are four books now signed up in the series. So the one that’s coming out this week and then there’s another one about school. And then there’s another holiday one coming out after that. I definitely wanted to create a series that featured this African American girl who had this big energy, who had all of this creativity, but who was really firmly grounded in her family and had this extended network of support. I looked at series like Fancy Nancy and things like that. And I just wanted that energy to be out there for Black girls.

Is that where you draw most of your inspiration from? Just sort of thinking back to your own childhood and some series that were available for you at that time?

Absolutely. I look back at my childhood as a source of inspiration because as I said earlier, that was a time when I felt so firmly entrenched…in this bubble of Blackness, kind of growing up on the South Side of Chicago in predominantly Black neighborhoods where we had neighbors who were characters in and of themselves. There were all kinds of stories in those communities, and we had such support for exploring. We rode our bikes. We climbed trees. We did all kinds of stuff like that. The good old days, right? 

And so I feel like that kind of energy needs to be brought into where we are now. And then I also look at where we are now at the things that kids are facing, especially some of the challenges that are directed towards people of color, like with book bans, with some of the incidents that are still happening with Black kids in their hair in school. And we need these places where we absolutely nourish and nurture our children. And yeah, provide that for the rest of the world to acknowledge that our kids are kids and they are full of life and ideas and joy.

Keyana Loves Her Friend will be released on December 12, 2023.

Click the audio player to hear the full interview with Natasha Tarpley.