When I was around eight or nine years old, pretty much all the hair on my head fell out – a condition, I learned, called alopecia. It lasted well into adulthood. It's a tough condition for a child, partly because so many people treat a bald head or a wig as a joke.

As a bookish kid, I was super-conscious of every mention of hair in fiction. That's one reason why Annie, the main character in The Serpent House, also has alopecia – not all heroines need flowing, Disney-fied locks! To coincide with the book's release I'll be working with the alopecia charity Be Bold, to promote awareness of the condition. Here are my top 10 favourite hair-related stories.

1. Medusa in Greek mythology

In the Greek myth, Medusa was a Gorgon who had live venomous snakes for hair and could turn anyone who looked at her directly into stone. A useful trick – but she was beheaded by Perseus who got round the problem by only looking at her in a mirror.

2. Rapunzel in the Brothers Grimm

This has to get a mention for the ultimate hair envy. In the Grimm Brothers' 1812 fairytale, her hair is so strong a prince can climb up it to rescue her from her tower prison. He mucks it up, of course, but that's not the hair's fault.

3. Der Struwwelpeter (Shock-headed Peter) by Heinrich Hoffman

Peter is one of the characters in Hoffman's ten illustrated poems about children. He doesn't take care of himself, letting his hair and nails grow wild, so he's unpopular. Unusual to see a boy being 'upbraided' for not being pretty.

4. Melisande by Edith Nesbit

Be careful what you wish for. Melisande is cursed at birth and grows up bald, but when her wish for hair that keeps on growing is granted, it causes even more problems.

5. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Red hair has now become very desirable indeed in children's literature, but poor Anne Shirley hated being teased for her carrot-coloured plaits. In a disastrous attempt to look like her raven-haired friend Diana, she tries to dye her hair black – but it turns out green.

6. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Any girl with anything about them wanted to be Jo, the only one of the March sisters with the guts to challenge convention. None of the others would have had the nerve to sell her chestnut hair for $25, to raise money for her ill father. What's more, she told her sisters that she had realised: "It will do my brains good to have that mop taken off."

7. The Waterhouse Girl by Sue Hampton

The only other novel I've found with a central character who's lost her hair. Daisy struggles to cope with some major life events and losing her hair is just one of them. This sensitively tackles the way people who look different attract the attention of bullies.

8. Ellie's Bad Hair Day by Jerome Keane

A picture book in which rainbow-locked Ellie describes her hair as 'a terrible something' – and travels four times round the world with her rabbit pal Oscar, to find someone with hair like her. In the end, though, her bright hair comes to her rescue and she learns to love being different.

9. Horrid Henry's Nits by Francesca Simon

Horrid Henry is a great favourite in our house. That curse of the classroom, the outbreak of nits, doesn't trouble Henry too much. But of course nits tend to be catching - as Perfect Peter and even Henry's teacher Miss Battle-Axe find out.

10. Granny Granny Please Comb My Hair by Grace Nicols (from Mother Gave a Shout: Poems by Women and Girls, edited by Susanna Steel and Morag Styles)

My eldest daughter thought this poem could have been written for her. A little girl begs her gentle granny to comb her hair instead of her mummy, who's "always in a hurry-hurry" and pulls and tugs. Yes, that harried mum was me!

Any more hairy stories that you like? Let Bea know on Twitter, at @BeaDavenport1. If you'd like to learn more about the childhood alopecia charity Be Bold, you can follow them on Twitter on @thebeboldteam

Bea Davenport's book The Serpent House is available now from the Guardian bookshop