millions of villages across china. that is the mentality of the company, all about growth and convincing us that we need more products. these are also in the most toxic categories and increasingly marketed to younger and younger girls. this is an example of a 5 or 7 year old on the cover of a skin, hair relaxer. these are ratings, that is the most toxic hair relaxers and no. 1 is a kid's product. then for hair dye, younger and younger girls are getting hair dye. "new york times", girls 10 and 11 are getting their hair dyed into the salon. it used to be 15 or 16. the industry was excited. this represent as growth market

for the industries. it also represents age and continued chemical exposures to many of these toxins for young girls and more exposures to the environment as hair dyes get into the waterway and food even if we don't get our hair dyed. our skin should be lighter and darkers, smoother, lips plumper, these companies have so much power over our minds, public space and sense of self as they continue to expose us to chemicals even though safer alternatives are available. we have the power.

we have the power to decide which products we put on our body and which companies we support with our money. that is actually a real power that can feel very very good when you start to take advantage of it. ahrolt a lot of this information is scary and real. i tell people, i do get to the good news around chapter 10. there is a lot of good news to share. i have heard so many amazing stories along the way. 30 cities in 13 states. 3,000 people come out to these talks. there is just an amazing energy.

and so many just wonderful store reus about people engaging in this work, people who have been to skin deep and start their own company or change their major. people making radical decisions about their own personal life styles. i like to tell this story of my kus cousin janet, 45, vice president at wells fargo. she was queen makeup diva. i was baby diva. she admitted to me she was spending $800 a month on beauty products. it was hair dye and facials and the most expensive products, ever. she read the book and started

to feel overwhelmed and discovered this superexpensive evening cream had hydroevo. it makes your skin tingle, so you think something is happening. she went back to the makeup counters and have polite conversations, hey, i think you can do better. until you do i'm going to buy something else. she decided to stop coloring her hair after many, many years and loves the way she looks and feels better than she has in a long time. when i heard about the stuff, i was mad about the chemicals, when i start to think about it, i realized, i was exhausted with trying to keep up with looking 10 years younger than i

am and not working any way. she felt liberated. that emotional journey. this sense of freedom and personal empowerment. that is the place i want us to get to. i am going to close with a couple of stories about the wonderful amazing things i was seen along the way that i think are the signs that we are really making huge changes and doing it together. every single person that took time out of their saturday is part of that movement and together we can do anything and we are changing the beauty industry. the power of information, this is skin deep. an amazing resource. you should check it out.

almost 30,000 products matched up with 50 government data bases and see how they score 0 to 10 on the toxicity month. if you look up shampoos, this is the most toxic and who is at the top of the list, loreal kids' shampoo. there are many, many companies on this list that are making safer shampoos. this the first that comes up in skin deep. more companies coming out with great new products and all sorts of thing that is you didn't get in the natural space that is available. the good news is innovation,

paul, the father of new chemistry. he is way too young to be the father of green chemistry. he is in his mid 40's and now teaching at yale. just got married to the woman that does the green design at yale. both programs are about a year old. the universities are finally trying to get this. amy on the right is the first chemist -- last year more women graduated than men. we have the technologies to figure this out.

we need to get the billion dollar beauty companies supporting this research. of course the power of act vision, opi nail products. they are the largest seller of largest products worldwide, 70 countries. they are using -- why don't you take it out of your u.s. products. they weren't too keen on that. we think the europeans are crazy. opi has fun names like i am not really a waitress red. we decided to do a spoof and we came up with our own names,

like i can't believe it is a carcinogen. we dressed up with sashes that said mistreatment. this all happened in may, by august the company announced they were taking out formaldehyde and now advertising all of their products are free of those chemicals. >> [applause]. >> that was a huge victory and it show that is we can change the industry, they are responsive and they can change on a dime relatively quickly. we have products and they work wonderfully and the prices didn't go. there is an initial resistance, we see it is possible to change

this industry and happening very quickly. so i want to commend everybody that has worked on that and everybody who has chosen to think about the research and what they are using. one last reading from the book, this theme and what is possible to do together. this is the- chapter of my book, extreme make over, we need to give the beauty industry, u.s. government and economy a make over. this is a story about 2 of my favorite she ras. the women went to a share holding meeting and carrying

5,000 brooms. in india a broom is a woman's power. by delivering brooms, we are telling them to clean up their mess. chemical melt down spent 20 tons of gas into their city. they are leading the fight to send justice to their people and the worst fate. mothers carry poisons in their breasts. she accepted the 2004 environmental prize. we are not expendable. we are not flowers offered at the profit and power. we are dancing flames commitmented to darkness and the magic and mystery of life. women have long been slain at the environmental health and

justice, from rachel to louis and the family of love canal. to the women of india and around the world fighting to clean up dangerously contaminated community. today more women have more power than ever before, especially more economic power and political power, women can shift the balance of power and change the face of the future. we are the once we have been waiting for as the poet june jordan. if we can bring ourselves to great clarity as to cause and effect. the environment is us, it is

our wombs, our breast milk and families. our children to thrive in our bodies, unpolluted. the beauty industry and on to the next clean up project, the plastic industry, oil and war industries, too until there are no more toxic chemicals in babies, no more rocket fuel in breast milk or communities burdened by pollution. that is the work before us and that is what we are here to do and thank you so much for joining me for beauty and make over.

>> patricia leanne caldwell born in tennessee. daughter of robert and irma. at age of 3 moved to missouri and returned when she was 12 years old. patricia grew up with segregation and injustices which she writes about. she spent many countless hours in the nashville public library. it was her family life that was

bountiful and flowing with tales told by her story telling grandfather. raised with love of reading and oral tradition. graduated from tennessee state and degree in english in 1964. she married her childhood friend on december 12. they are the parents of fredrick and twins robert and john. her education continued with a master's degree in early childhood literature, and programming in 1975 from webster university. patricia has a successful career as a teacher and children's book editor. she changed careers to become a full time writer of children and young adult books. her goal is to create books for and about african-americans. i write because there is a need

to have books for, by and about the african-american experience and how we helped to develop this country. i present to you patricia makinsik heart of literacy. >> i am from st. louis, missouri. a lot of you think i have said it in correctly when i said missouri. you think i got it slid into my southern dialect, right? no. i was not born in st. louis. i was born in nashville, tennessee, a little town side of nashville. that is where i grew up, went to high school, met and married my husband. moved back to st. louis where i lived part of my life. i heard people saying missouri

and missouri. what is the correct pronunciation of our new home? the best place to go when you want information is where? >> [inaudible]. >> of course, we all know that. i went to the library and the librarian gave me a wonderful book and began a life long friendship with the librarian. missouri is the native american pronunciation. in their language it is the people of the big boats. one word means all of that. missouri. frenchman who came up the mississippi river. they said that would be a great place to have a trading post.

they set up a trading post and called it st. louis. missouri became missouri. now i ask you which is correct? missouri or missouri? >> missouri. okay. neither one. [laughter]. you can't say the native americans were wrong for saying missouri. you can't say the french were wrong for pronouncing it in their language, just different ways of pronouncing the same word. that is where we have the problem with the word different. different isn't a synonym of the word wrong. we have to be careful how we use it and our children.

it answers the question, why do you write that? i write to tell the story. one that has fallen through the cracks, one marginalized by main stream history. either misrepresented or represented to the way in which it is a stereo typical, write to take those stereotypes, reshape them and give them back to you dressed in a new dress. i mean when i say different is not a synonym for wrong, it means that we should celebrate those things. everyone in this room is different in some way. but you should not feel bad

about that. your uniqueness, as my grandson who loves to make up words, that is your wonderment. [laughter]. it answers that question that we get asked most often is why do you write? you can say pat is write to tell that different story and different is not a synonym for wrong. before i was a writer, however, i was a listener. i grew up listening to stories. listening to language. come with me to nashville, tennessee to an old farmhouse set back off the road, a little house, window here, window here

and doorway that looked like a face. the windows, door, and front porch kind of sag so it looked like a smiling face. [laughter]. then there was a long sidewalk that led up to the house. when you turn and started toward it, you felt like you were going to a warm and happy place. my grandparents loved to in the evening sit on the front porch. there was a radio that set in the window, my grandfather would listen to the ball game. i remember when marion anderson would sing, my grandmother made us be quiet and respectful before greatness. every once in a while a

neighbor would come by and would excuse herself and come out with a pitcher of lemonade or ice tea. she had those tea cakes that i loved. most of the time children would say go on and play. you wouldn't listen to grown up's conversation. at that point we were all welcome. the stories were layered. seniors got something that the young parents and fathers learned, then teenagers and little ones. we all got something out of the story. they were layered. i try to do that in my writing. i try to layer so that the reader who is sharing the story with the young person will get

something out of it or see something they can learn from as well. my mother loved to do poetry. i would sit in the hallow of her arm and begin resiting dunbar poetry. [inaudible] you as dirty as me. look at that mouth. him being so sweet and sticky, goodness. i would say momma, do it again, please. i would beg her to do it again, she would say, no, go to bed, now. i grew up listening to dunbar who wrote in dialect, little brown baby. he wrote beautiful things in

standard english. an angel robed in spotless white. the spirit was gone, men saw the blush and called it [inaudible]. i fell in love with that beautiful black angel. i could visualize it the way my mother would resite it. i know why the cage bird sings, it would be free. it is not a carol of joy or pray upward to heaven he fling. i know why the cage bird sings. mia angelou knew of it.

i like dunbar, my grandfather used words the way he described him. good morning mr. james, how are you feeling this morning. he would say i am stepping, but not high. isn't that wonderful? okay. okay. i go play down by the creek. he would say yes, tkarlg, but be particular. that meant be careful because i love you and don't want anything to happen to you. it was coded in the be protected. he often said be careful now.

that meant one thing, be particular, there was stuff down by the creek and he wanted me to be careful and watch because he didn't want anything to happen to me. be particular did it all. when he would say when you go over there, i want you to walk and hold your head up like you belong to somebody. that meant you were representing your family. i want you to carry yourself in a way that you represent your family well with. he didn't have to go through all of that. hold your head up and act like you belong to somebody. if you didn't, you were growing up like a weed. i love dunbar for that reason. fast forward many years later, i am a teacher of 8th grade

english. i want to give my students dunbar. there is nothing for young readers. so i complained. it is a shame they don't have a book about dunbar in the library. somebody ought to write a book about it. then it hit me, instead of whining and complaining why i haven't gotten something i need, write it yourself. but i had never written a book before, how do you start? well, i went to the library again, found a book, how to write a children's book, not a very imaginative title, but it told me what i needed. wrote a book from cover to

cover, researched it. i knew ever detail. even went to his home in dayton, ohio and visited his house, shared it with my students and they said who wrote this? it is awful. [laughter]. it is so boring. i said mercifully, i did not put my name on it. it was dreadful because i had simply paid attention to detail. i had not bothered to give the young reader a story to hang on. they didn't know dunbar, they w