I wanted book to be secular, accurate and factual.. to do that I had to speak to everybody. I know now why it hasn’t been done before. It’s a nightmare
After 18 months of painstaking research, mum Medeia created Hats of Faith to teach her son and other kids about diversity and why some religious people cover their heads
PUSHING a pram around the streets of multicultural south London, Medeia Cohan was used to seeing people of all faiths and beliefs, wearing their traditional dress.
But as her son Lachlan began to be curious about the world around him, she realised he would soon start asking questions. Why is that lady all covered up in black? What is that on that man’s head?
It dawned on her that she would not know how to answer accurately. So, she looked around for a children’s book she could read with Lachlan, to help him understand the dress codes of all their different neighbours.
The 40-year-old American could not find the book she was looking for. So she decided to write it herself.
Medeia, who now lives in Glasgow, said: “I set out totally naively. I’m not a children’s author. I’m a mom and I’ve a professional career not as a writer. I just thought that this book should exist.
“I know now why this book didn’t exist. Because it’s a nightmare.”
Called Hats of Faith, Medeia has created a charming picture book showing some of the different head coverings worn by people of different religions around the world.
It looks pretty straightforward. Yet it took 18 months of intensive research, UN-level negotiations and agonising decisions to get it from concept to Waterstones.
Medeia said: “It sounds really stupid for a book with fewer than 150 words in it but it is such a sensitive subject and I was making very broad statements.
“I wanted to produce a very secular, factual and accurate mainstream publication. To do that I had to speak to everyone.
“There’s a lot of inaccuracy on the internet. Then within faiths there are variations – there are Orthodox Jews, Reform Jews and Hassidic Jews.”
Medeia took her queries to the top. She spoke to religious costuming experts at the Smithsonian and the British Museum, theology and religious studies professors here and in and the US. She met religious leaders and went to all kinds of churches and places of worship. This is where living in Tooting Broadway was an advantage.
She said: “I didn’t have to go outside of my neighbourhood to go to a Sikh gurdwara or a mosque. I went to the Ethiopian church and the African church and they were all in walking distance of my house.
“These are not places I would normally have found myself and they were all so welcoming. They were open and interested in what I was doing.”
To boil down everything she learned on her travels into a picture book took 27 attempts.
Medeia said: “I could do a PhD in Headwrapology, the amount of information I waded through in order to be able to say most
Muslim women do this or many Muslim wear these.” And even then there were dilemmas.
“I had to think about using a word like ‘most’ – I didn’t want to make women who don’t wear a hijab feel like less Muslim. “Navigating these tricky subjects is very delicate.”
She felt a huge responsibility to get it right, for Lachlan and for other kids reading the book.
Medeia added: “This was as much a learning process for me as it was a creative venture.
“My mother’s Jewish but I didn’t even know the head covering orthodox women wear is called a tichel.”
Since writing the book, Medeia has moved to Glasgow with Lachlan and her husband Jason. And she has heard from lots of parents. Families who don’t live in cosmopolitan cities can go a long time without seeing anyone wearing a hijab or a kippah.
She said: “My neighbour’s little girl saw a women in a burka at the grocery store and called her a ghost. She didn’t say it in a hateful way. A ghost was her most familiar reference point.
“But if her books had diverse looking people in them, she would have recognised a burka
“It’s about preparing your small people for these encounters so they’re comfortable.”
On her travels with the book she has found that children here are familiar with at least some of the pictures. In the US, it was a different story.
Medeia said: “They didn’t know what I was on about. The only one they really knew was a turban because Aladdin wears one in the
movie. They had never seen a hijab or a tichel. Outside of the big cities, a lot of America is very white and very fearful.”
She knows the book can only be a starting point. It’s aimed at very small children and her message to them is a basic one.
Medeia said: “It’s about learning the names, talking about being respectful, explaining that these are not like winter hats or baseball caps. Really basic things about how they’re about showing love and respect for God;
The bigger issues raisedmodesty, faith - spirituality, canget the come conversationlater. Her job is to started.
Medeia hopes that Hats of Faith will help children grown up with an open mind and generous spirit towards people of all faiths – and none. She said: “I believed if
you prepare them when they’re young, maybe they’ll be kinder when they grow up.
“It’s my small contribution to making sure there’s not a new generation of small-minded people who vote for Trump.”
For more on the book, go to www. hatsoffaith.com.
Medeia will be leading workshops in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Renfrew as part of Scottish Interfaith Week, which starts on November 14. Find out more at www. scottishinterfaithweek.org
It’s about preparing your small people so that they’re comfortable