Dr. Qiana Gray is from Los Angeles, CA. She is an educator that has traveled the world, visiting over 20 countries and living in four - America, Mexico, South Korea, and South Africa. Her passion for reading started at a young age. Growing up in a literacy-rich household where reading for pleasure was encouraged, she grew to love getting lost in a good book and expressing her ideas through pen to paper.
At an early age, as an introverted child, she realized she expressed herself better in written form than when speaking. Therefore she grew to love writing poetry and short stories. Her poetry was published in one book of poetry when she was thirteen years old, and from that moment, she knew she wanted to fulfill her dream of becoming a successful author. However, becoming a successful author was placed on hold as she grew and gained new life experiences.
Her educator career began a bit more than 15 years ago. During COVID, she, like many educators, taught online. Her focus was reading intervention for children in America and South Africa. As a reading intervention specialist, she found a lack of character diversity and story development in books for struggling readers. So, she began doing research in the form of finding emergent reading books that:
1. Showed and valued Black and Brown children, the highest percentage of struggling readers
2. Encouraged story development to grab focus
3. Allowed the child to read the books on their own
She found there weren’t any books that matched this search. If there were urban characters, they were animals or other personified versions of Black and people of color, but not Black or people of color. This bothered her, so she decided to create the books herself.
The books are called Sight of Me: Sight Word books because they celebrate Black and Brown children, allowing them to see themselves during the early stages of building a love of reading. With vibrant pictures and easy-to-read sentences, mostly sight words, it is hoped that this approach to children's emergent books will encourage confident and strong readers.
The vision is to create a reading-friendly world where many children in around the globe in underprivileged, overlooked, and often ignored locations can read. Her main dream is that the Sight of Me: Sight Word Books be known globally as one of the best primary books for kids learning to read.
Other Books Written By Dr. Gray: Growing Up Beautiful & Nya's Adventures Through her travels, she has learned self-love, avoiding stigmatized labels connected to stereotypes based upon race, gender, and culture, respecting and understanding other cultures, and the true definition of courage to be who you are destined to become. Through her personal experiences, with struggling with weight, body image (body dysmorphia), bullying, and learning to love herself despite the negativity of others she realized that many of her experiences through travel and growing up as a chubby Black girl could be shared and appreciated by others. Because her educational career has focused on young learners, she decided to write with a focus on encouraging and shaping the minds of children.
