By Janine Schall, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, TX

Over half the world’s population speaks more than one language. While many people naturally become multilingual by growing up in multilingual communities, others deliberately learn a second or third language later in life. People learn new languages for many reasons, including to maintain connections to heritage and family, in order to navigate a new country, and to communicate with new friends and communities. Sometimes people even invent their own ways to communicate! In this collection of picturebooks, we find a dozen different examples of people learning a new language or finding a way to communicate.

WOW Dozen features a list of 12 global books for children and adolescents around a theme, topic, issue or personal favorites. Each Dozen consists of ten newly-published titles with two older “must have” books. Please share or recommend additional books that fit the theme in the comments section or on social media using #WOWDozen. Use the printer icon in the upper left corner of this post to print or save this list as a PDF.​

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• Themes: Andrea Wang, Boris Kulikov, Dasha Ziboroca, Day Saida Arrived, Doctor Esperanto and the Language of Hope, Gabrielle Grimard, Gibberish, Hyewon Yum, In English Of Course, Janine Schall, Jen Bryant, Jill Arena, John Parra, JonArno Lawson, Josephine Nobisso, Karla Gudeon, Language of Angels, Lars Baus, Lawrence Schimel, Luli and the Language of Tea, Mara Rockliff, Melanie Florence, Michael Genhart, Mina Belongs Here, Piet Grobler, Playgrounds of Babel, Playing Loteria, Polly Lawson, Rene Colato Lainez, Richard Michelson, Sandra Niebuhr-Siebert, Six Dots, Sonja Wimmer, Spanish is the Language of My Family, Stolen Words, Susana Gómez Redondo, Young Vo, Zosia Dzierzawska
• Descriptors: WOW Dozen