Worlds of Words

Introduction

Worlds of Words is committed to creating an international network of people who share the vision of bringing books and children together to build bridges across cultures. Our mission is to encourage thoughtful dialogue around international literature so that children can reflect on their own cultural experiences and imagine global experiences beyond their own. We are working together within this network to promote intercultural understanding and global perspectives through children’s books, to identify excellent culturally authentic literature, to provide resources for adults who share a passion for connecting readers with books, to share the stories of children’s dialogue and interactions around international literature, and to encourage the integration of international literature into the curriculum.

These goals are being met in a variety of ways through both global and local projects. Globally, we are reaching out through a web site that contains a range of resources including a database and an electronic journal for educators in the United States and throughout the world. Locally, we are involved in projects within schools and have established the International Collection of Children’s and Adolescent Literature at the University of Arizona, which includes reading rooms and a collection of international literature. Worlds of Words (WOW) encompasses several programs and the International Collection of Children’s and Adolescent Literature (ICCAL). This annual report focuses on the efforts of WOW in the past year.

Board of Advisors

February 14, 2007 marked the establishment of the WOW Advisory Board. Their initial task was to evaluate the emerging website and on-line database. Additionally, they were provided with preliminary flyers and asked to assist in early promotional efforts. Each advisor was provided with articles on internationalism and international children’s literature. They were also encouraged to look at the links on our webpage to familiarize themselves with our partners and other similar organizations.

By November the board was ready to meet in person. Our first and second meetings were held on the 2nd and 3rd. It became apparent upon our first meeting that beyond the work of WOW, the advisors are involved in complementary projects where collaboration would be mutually beneficial. For the second meeting, advisors were grouped into committees based on their areas of interest. The three committees are Nominations, WOW Stories, and WOW Review.

The next face-to-face meeting with the Board of Advisors will be held Sunday, March 9, 2008. Tasks for the meeting will be to report on the progress of WOW, check in with committee work, and set goals for the remainder of the year.

On-line Publications

WOW Stories. Our inaugural issue of WOW Stories: Connections from the Classroom was published on-line in Fall 2007. A limited number of issues were printed for the school and teachers who participated in the work and for promotional purposes. A total of 12 articles written by classroom teachers were published in that issue.

The WOW Stories committee has committed to publishing WOW Stories twice a year with the next expected in June 2008. The editorship travels with each issue. The duties of the editor are to accept or solicit articles from classroom teachers, evaluate the merit of publication for each submission, edit/proof the compilation of articles and to submit them to the WOW programs manager a month prior to the publication date.

WOW Review. The WOW Review committee determined to publish WOW Review: Reading Across Cultures quarterly. The WOW Review chair will serve as editor for all the issues. Committee members establish a list of 12-15 books for review and from that list each will provide two culturally authentic reviews in the approved format and submit them to the editor. The editor is responsible for compiling and proofing each review and submitting them to the WOW programs manager a month prior to the publication deadline.

Acquisitions

Nomination Committee. The major task of the Nomination Committee is to evaluate children’s and adolescent books for nomination to the on-line database. The initial recommendations for inclusion are:
• Nomination by at least two sources, one of whom must be a member of the cultural group represented in the book.
• Books do not have to be physically present in the collection to be entered into the database, but they need to have been physically examined by the nominee.
• Illustrations must be determined as authentic before picture books are nominated.
• Books do not have to be in English to be in the collection.

A list of nominated books is forthcoming. The Nomination Committee uses a variety of strategies to find recently published and hard to find books for their recommendations.

ICCAL. WOW’s physical collection, the International Collection of Children’s and Adolescent Literature, is housed in specialized reading rooms in the basement of the College of Education. The collection is for teaching and research purposes and so the books are not available for checkout. An exact count of books in the physical collection and books acquired in the past year is not yet available. The initial collection has been appraised and an estimated 25-30,000 books are on the shelves. A portion of these books is the focus of WOW and has been entered into the wowlit on-line database. Because of the evolving nature of the database, new books haven’t been entered and therefore they are not quantified.

The big news for ICCAL in 2007 is the collaboration established with the University of Arizona Library. As books come into the collection, they are sent to the UA Library for inclusion in their catalogue. The University’s records indicate the titles as held in ICCAL and the Library is also acquiring copies of many of the books for their holdings so that books are available for checkout. The records are available both on the University of Arizona Library site and on the World Cat database, available to libraries around the world.

Another major development is a grant from the Tohono O’odham Tribal Nation to purchase indigenous children’s and adolescent literature from tribal nations in the United States and around the world. A graduate student is currently working to gather a list of books for purchase in April/May 2008 to be added to the collection.

www.wowlit.org

After a bidding process, WOW contracted Dennis Whiteman, an experienced web designer and database programmer, to create an attractive, useful site to ensure that people can access our services from anywhere in the world. The initial design is complete, but we are working on a better “wow” factor. The idea is to get something playful that isn’t corny, something functional that isn’t boring.

The website has many technical considerations. The domains, www.wowlit.org, .net, and .com, have been reserved with the intention to use www.wowlit.org as the URL. We expect it to be approved for use by the University of Arizona, who will be wowlit’s server once the website is complete. The organization/navigation of the pages changes constantly as WOW changes. Motion on a website is desirable since visitors prefer to see new things each time they go to a website. As the navigation changes, more pages, and therefore more information, are provided on the website.

The biggest challenge faced by wowlit is creating and maintaining a functional database. Initially the idea was to use open source library software. Unfortunately, the easy choice wasn’t a good fit for the type of data the wowlit database requires and so a database was built for wowlit with that in mind. For this reason also, data is hand-entered by graduate student employees who must be trained in the database and the evaluation of books.

Local Projects and Grants

Two grant projects are currently underway within WOW. One is an NCTE grant, Developing Intercultural Understandings through International Children’s Literature. This three-year research study focuses on how teachers integrate international literature into the curriculum and how children respond to this literature, particularly related to intercultural understandings. The research is occurring in a small public school in which the administrators and teachers have committed to a school-wide focus on the integration of international literature and to participation in a study group and a literacy lab. This university/school collaboration is co-directed by Kathy Short, a university researcher, and Lisa Thomas, the instructional coach at the school and the facilitator of the learning lab and study group. A collaborative team of teachers meets in the summer in a writing workshop to examine their field notes and student work and write classroom narratives about the significant themes from their analysis of students’ responses over the preceding school year. The first team met in June 2007 to write narratives that are published in WOW Stories and a second team will meet in June 2008. We are in the second year of the NCTE grant and have submitted two other grants to continue this project into the third year.

A second project, Introducing Children and Adolescents to the World: Creating Integrated Units that Invite Students into the Study of New Cultures and Languages, was funded by the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language, and Literacy (CERCLL), a National Foreign Language Resource Center. The goal of this project is to engage K-8 students in a study of the world to explore other cultural perspectives and languages. The first workshop on Korean culture and language was offered on January 26, 2008 and a follow-up study group is meeting in spring 2008. A key component of this workshop was the creation of a language and culture kit containing books and other language materials that teachers and librarians can checkout for use in the classroom. At this time, the Korean Language and Culture kit is available to participants who took part in the professional development workshop.

Promotions

Through a careful creative process and with the help of the University of Arizona College of Education, a logo for WOW was generated. The logo required special considerations to keep within the constraints of the University as well as the vision for the organization. The elements include the organizational name, a globe, books, and a “hidden” WOW.

Three “press packets” were generated with three distinct goals: fund raising, media coverage, and patron use. Most of the copy written for these packets can be found on the website. These will evolve as WOW achieves more goals, new needs emerge, and the organization becomes more established.

With 2007 being the first “official” year for WOW, it was unusual to get so much press coverage. Six online articles were published on WOW events and activities by various university promotional services, the Arizona Wildcat, and the Tucson Citizen. Three of these articles were also published in traditional papers. In addition, a feature on WOW was televised by KUAT, the local PBS affiliate, and is also available on-line.

Beginning with the new year, WOW will expand its own promotions program. The focus will be to advertise WOW nationally and internationally by issuing news releases more broadly.

Events

In addition to the on-line and community outreach evidenced in WOW’s activities for 2007, several “in house” events were carried out. WOW hosted two open houses. The first of these focused on university and community partners and featured a small program of speakers and a studio experience with art and picture books. The second open house welcomed community members to ICCAL in a more casual atmosphere.

WOW also had the honor of hosting two major exhibits in three separate events. The first of the exhibits was the IBBY Honour Books. This collection made its U.S. debut with WOW. These rare and sometimes difficult to find books were determined to be the best books from their country of origin published in 2006. The second exhibit of books, a collection from the International Youth Library, made its last U.S. stop with WOW. WOW provided graduate student volunteers, who not only are international but who are also well-versed in quality children’s literature, to discuss the books with the participants.

Conferences provide WOW a way to network and promote programs. In March, WOW conducted the annual Children’s Literature Conference. In November, WOW hosted the IBBY conference in Tucson. Presentations about WOW and the research grants were made at NCTE, NRC, Tucson TAWL, and several universities.

A smaller, but no less crucial, annual event for WOW is the annual book sale. This is an opportunity for WOW to cull its collection for evaluation of condition as well as authenticity, appropriateness, and excess duplication.

Financial Statement

WOW applied for several grants in 2007. These primarily focused on supporting ongoing programs. Three key grants came in from NCTE, CERCLL and the Tohono O’odham Nation. Several other grants were submitted, but not funded. These “rejections” have had some welcome results. In introducing WOW to granting agencies, personal relationships have been established and name recognition, networking, and exchange of ideas has occurred that will undoubtedly help in future fundraising. Grant writing will be on-going to support individual programs.

In addition to grants, WOW has received multiple cash donations. The Board of Advisors donated several hundred dollars through the University of Arizona Foundation. Several private donors gave money through the Development Office in the College of Education. The Development Office has been active in our fundraising and promises to do more in the next year. In 2008, we would like to establish an endowment to support our operations.

Conclusion

While a great deal of the groundwork for WOW was established prior to 2007, the past year brought a great deal of formalization of programs, policies, and processes. The most significant of these were establishing a Board of Advisors and creating our website. With these in place WOW’s outlook for 2008 is solid.

Next year look for WOW Stories and WOW Review to publish and promote nationally. Watch www.wowlit.org to continue to expand and the database to function at a higher level. See WOW representatives and partners at conferences and conferences. All of this requires financing and so a major goal will be to establish the endowment.