WOW Dozen: Nonfiction Adaptations for Young Readers
Adult nonfiction titles adapted for young readers are excellent for engaging secondary and even undergraduate students in vital contemporary issues and conversations. This WOW Dozen highlights newer titles that make essential books written for adults accessible to younger readers. Many adaptations include contextual information that is not included in the original version because of assumed prior knowledge. Also, by using more familiar vocabulary or defining unfamiliar language, and other strategies for increasing accessibility, young readers are invited into the essential understandings and concepts from popular adult nonfiction, encouraging intergenerational community dialogue.
An Indigenous lesson in how listening to the plants around us can help develop ecological awareness & deep gratitude.
Personal narratives, well-researched history, & contemporary Indigenous issues are combined to tell a full, complex & compelling story of Native America.
17 first-person narratives of people with diverse disability experiences are counternarratives to prevalent disability stereotypes & the rampant silencing & invisiblizing of members of the disability community.
A memoir of Jewish disability rights activist Judish Heumann, who led the longest sit-in protest in US history.
A woman enslaved by George & Martha Washington plans & executes an escape to New England.
This book is a call to action for a new understanding of how racism impacts all people through economic policy & more.
The memoir of soccer star & queer activist tells the story of her childhood & works to inspire young readers to take action for what they believe in.
A broad history of LGBTQI+ people in the United States over the past 400 years including many biographical narratives.
Vargas was brought to the US from the Philippines as a child and hid his illegal immigration status for years as he worked as a journalist.
Four undocumented Mexican secondary students living in Phoenix, AZ win a national robotics competition despite having few resources.
A memoir of the Black Muslim American Olympic medalist in fencing.
This memoir shares the life events that helped shape Palestinian American Sarsour into an activist, helping to organize one of the largest single day protests in United States history.
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.
