KANSAS CITY, Mo — Dayonne Richardson is an educator, children’s book author and motivational speaker.
She works as an Academic Instructional Coach in Kansas City Missouri.
Since 2020, she has written three children’s books.
“I Told the Storm” reminds us that the darkest storms can still bring the most beautiful growth. “Our Gift Grace” serves as a reminder of the gift we give to ourselves and others. “A Letter to My Favorite Student” is all the many things a teacher loves about her students.
“So many of our babies struggle with reading, but the passion has got to be connected,” Richardson said. “It’s not enough you read a book that you can actually read, do you enjoy the book you’re reading?"
Richardson has been an educator for 15 years. She decided to become an author after seeing a lack of representation in school age characters reflected in books.
“As an educator, a lot of the books I was reading to my students didn’t look like them,” said Richardson. “And Toni Morrison said it best, 'If there’s a book that you’re looking for that you can’t find, that’s the one you should write.”'
She turned a new page; creating what she didn’t see and from there Mirror Mirror Books was born. Each book has dolls and pillows of the characters.
“It was important to me, the mirror of it all,” said Richardson. “Students being able to see themselves as the hero, the champion, the fly, the cool. I wanted them to be able to see that confidence and you can’t do that if you don’t get a chance to look into the mirror.”
According to a study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, nearly 80% of children’s books have white characters or are about animals. Only 23% of the children's books show people of color.
Just like her books, she is full of surprises.
She applied for a grant in 2023 to fund a library at Hogan Prep Elementary School through a local conference called Amplify. The school had been without a librafor seven years.
Out of all the stories, there’s still one she has yet to tell — her own. That's when she’ll finally hold up the mirror to see herself.
“It would probably be the teacher that didn’t give up," Richardson said. "To become a teacher, I took my teacher test 13 times. And there were so many times I wanted to quit and I’m so thankful I didn’t.”
As an enthusiastic business owner of Mirror Mirror Books LLC, her desire is that her readers will always see themselves in anything she writes or creates.
She understands the mirror matters.
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