Welcome to Worlds of Words. You will find useful resources on this site for building bridges between cultures. These resources include strategies for locating and evaluating culturally authentic international children’s and adolescent literature as well as ways of engaging students with these books in classrooms and libraries. Use the blue navigation bar at the top of the page to browse or search our growing database of books, to read one of our two on-line journals, or to learn more about our mission. Take time to explore the site and return often as we expand to include more voices like yours.
What’s New at WOW
Global Literature and Content Area Literacy: Exploring the Pedagogical Possibilities of Content Area Classrooms is the theme of this issue of WOW Stories. Through a grant from the Longview Foundation, middle and high school teachers explored of how to use global and multicultural literature in other content areas of the curriculum. The project employed online components, such as an email chat loop for the teachers as well as an additional Wiki Space and Group Blog for teachers and students to share experiences and book responses across classrooms. In turn, each literacy community member wrote a vignettes to share their experiences in this issue of WOW Stories.
Our current issue of WOW Review focuses on books in which characters must undertake a forced journey. This kind of journey does not always indicate a negative outcome although it does reflect a challenge that requires time, strength, and a critical stance from its participants. The reviews in this issue cut across a variety of contexts within which the characters are forced along pathways, physically and mentally, as the result of political, social, cultural, and ideological movements or change. Volume 4, Issue 2 reviews books that clearly show evidence of the strength and resiliency of young people whose challenges will resonate with the reader.
One of the critical issues Worlds of Words explores is whether or not children’s books accurately reflect a culture in present time. Sometimes it is the author who, though well intentioned, freezes a culture in a specific time in the past, as in Mirror by Jeannie Baker. In some cases, though, it is the culture or country that bears some responsibility. This month WOW Currents looks at that issue in the context of children’s literature in Cambodia.
Cambodia is a country where nearly every author, teacher and intellectual was killed or driven out. Adult literary traditions and genres are literally being recreated, but there are no children’s authors or illustrators. Yet, there is evidence in this week’s discussion of Cambodian children’s literature that it is “rising from the ashes” .
See our complete listing of all WOW Currents entries.
Each Wednesday, we spotlight an entry from our WOW Books database and ask you to provide insight about the book by leaving a comment.
Since the beginning of time, we have looked at the moon in awe and have been inspired to create stories, poems, music, art, and inventions to take us to the moon and back. It is almost impossible to pick up a children’s book without some depiction or reference to the moon and many young adult novels feature the moon in the title and/ or the influence of the moon on the character’s lives. I invite you to explore the moon with me this month. As you are reminded of the moon in other works, please comment about them; as you think of questions, please post them; and as you explore each of these books, please add your thoughts.
Imagine the feelings of excitement and anxiety a 14 year old girl in Maryland, whose father is Mexican, feels she is invited to visit her grandparents who will wait for her “on the day of the full moon, in June, at the Oaxaca airport.” In What the Moon Saw, by Laura Resau,Clara Luna has her her cultural preconceptions challenged as she gets to know her extended family and discovers who she is.
WOW Highlights
∞ Open Reading Hours: Saturdays – 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. & Mondays through Fridays – 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
∞ Make a quick and easy online gift to WOW! Your contributions help our programs grow.
∞ WOW Stories and WOW Review are accepting submissions. Our two online journals are available to you without subscription, membership, or fee requirements. We are proud to offer these journals and want to hear from you. E-mail us with questions, feedback, and submissions.
