Reading With Your Kids Podcast · Jedlie Circus Productions, Inc

A Black Girl And Her Braids

·55 min

The show opens warmly. Jedli greets listeners across languages, lands the episode in book-loving Reedville, and treats Reading With Your Kids like a family table with books on it. Then Jalene Clark-Owens gets the room. She talks through the long route from an earlier children's book idea to the pitch that finally worked. The first try stalled, but it taught her the publishing basics: query letters, agent outreach, and the patience it takes to keep sending work out. Then an old classmate appears in the story, almost too neatly. While researching New Leaf Literary Agency, Jalene finds Jania Carter, a former Frederick Douglass Academy classmate from seventh through twelfth grade. Their history helps open the door, but it does not do the work for her. Jalene pitches the braid book, Jania says yes, takes her on as a client, and brings the project to publishing houses. Penguin comes in. Jedli shifts the conversation toward trust: how do you let an illustrator carry part of a story this personal? Brittany Bond becomes the answer. Penguin shows Jalene several illustrators, and Brittany's braid drawings make the choice feel obvious. Jalene gives short notes for each spread, then watches Brittany add her own eye to the words and vision. The episode ends where this show likes to land: books, kids, gratitude, and the small ways people try to leave the world a little kinder.

As heard by us

A warm book-world conversation that turns publishing details into a story about care, identity, and visual detail.

Jalene Clark-Owens brings a steady, practical warmth to the discussion of A Black Girl and Her Braids. The episode spends time on how the book was built, from learning to write a query letter to reaching New Leaf Literary, reconnecting with a former classmate there, and then…

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a braided story about books, identity, and how A Black Girl and Her Braids came to be.

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