Meena is also the author of two children's books. "Once I became a mom and we started looking through children's literature for our girls, I felt it was great that in the last three to five years there's been this burst of literature around historical women," Meena explained to Glamour in January 2020. "I think that's super important, but I also had this feeling like, well, wouldn't it be great if we had actual stories and real character development around girls — girls that look like mine, that were Black and brown children?"
Kamala and Maya's Big Idea (which was published in June 2020) tells the true story of how sisters Maya and Kamala turned an unused courtyard in their apartment building into an area for kids. Ambitious Girl (which was published in January 2021) follows a young protagonist who learns to take up space and own her potential. As Menna told OprahMag.com following the publication of her second book, she was raised to believe ambition was a good thing. "It meant purpose, it meant power, it meant determination, it meant having a dream and going after it, even when other people tried to tell you it couldn't be done," she said. "That's all I knew, because my whole family was this little unit of me, my grandma, my mom, and my aunt, and it's what I would see every day."