LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — When Lexington native Lafe Taylor was growing up, he would have laughed at you if you told him one day he would work in the world of education.
When I was going to school, I hated school. I absolutely hated school”, Taylor remembers. “I always tested really well and was always in honors classes, but as far as doing school work and all those things, I hated it.”
But the graphic designer by trade now has a family and two teenagers who homeschool and, from them, he drew a new inspiration.
“Whenever I had the opportunity to teach other kids, I looked at it through the lens of ‘what kind of things did I enjoy? What kind of things did I like?’ And it was always the professors that were very engaging.”
That new passion led him to create “Big Head Charles”, a series of children’s books to encourage reading at a very, very young age.
“I was just sitting around in the house with my wife and kids and we were talking about the biggest insult a kid could have when he was young was being called ‘big head’ and that’s how Big Head Charles was created”, says Taylor. “Going back to the focus on education and kids and kids of color especially, that really made me start focusing in on this”
Lafe has a dream of turning this into a TV show, and has reached out to networks to make that happen in hopes of reaching more children.
“Not a lot of people, not a lot of black people specifically, are in this space. That’s really one of the reasons that I wanted to focus on that. I want to do all levels of education, starting at preschool and going all the way to adulthood”, says Taylor.
Lafe hopes the books – and maybe the TV show – will be an inspiration to young people of color, beginning right in his own household.
“I always think about learning lessons for my children and lessons they can learn from. They’ve seen me start this from scratch, from the ideation phase to see it go through to the process of having a book and potentially a show. I just released a game today on my website. Just so they can see the iteration process and what all it takes and how many people get involved. It means a lot to me, especially for what I have in mind for what it will be.”
