BY MICHAEL THOMAS

When 17-year-old Pickering High school student Keira Salmon’s class was given an assignment with the option to either go out to an elementary school class and teach the kids some of what they have learned or write a children ’s book, she decided to write the book.

Since the book had to be about the black identity and what it means to be black in Canada, Salmon decided to throw in some of her own life experiences into the project also. Salmon, who grew up not being confident with her skin tone or appearance, wanted her readers to see things from her perspective.

Her book called “There’s Magic In My Melanin”, is about an 11-year-old girl named Nayla who despises her black appearance and wishes she was white but thanks to her Jamaican grandmother she is taught to accept and love herself for who she really is.

Grandma Joy sets her granddaughter straight by explaining to Nayla the special qualities of being black, “Your melanin is the ingredient that gives your skin its color explains Grandma Joy and lights up a room when you walk in. It makes you stand out in a crowd. It absorbs the sunlight in a unique way. It turns heads when you walk by. Your skin is magical!”

At 17 Salmon is not an outgoing person but is comfortable with her friends and family and enjoys having a good time, when asked what she thinks people who read her book would take away from it, the grade 12 author said ‘I am hoping that people would realize that there is beauty in themselves and to be confident in who they are as a person and to love their appearance and love where they come from, I definitely want people to be more confident in the skin there are in.”

Salmon said she would like to see more people of color and their stories portrayed in big media and less of the underrepresentation of blacks and other minorities being stereotyped, and cautioned of the dangers of a single story, she said, “I just feel that we are not given a chance to express all of those stories that minority groups can offer to the world.”

When asked what response she gets from other people about her book, Salmon recalls reading her book to two different classes in her previous elementary school and the feedback was so positive from the children to the extent that some even opened up about their life experiences as well.

The grade 12 student is presently looking for a publisher so that her book will be able to hit the stores soon but in the meantime Salmon has a list of things she would like to accomplish, things like writing a full length novel, going to university to study sociology, travel a lot since all her life she has been confined to Canada and help her community.

All of the illustrations in the story was created by Salmon’s older sister Jaida Salmon who will be graduating soon from Sheridan College with a bachelor of animation.