By Janine M. Schall, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Several months ago I posted a WOW Dozen called Multiple Perspectives on Names and Naming. While I was collecting picturebooks on names in preparation for writing that post, I realized that while the books connected to the topic in a wide variety of ways, a large percentage of them focused on children learning to love their unique or unusual names. Because there were so many excellent books with this focus, I decided to do a separate WOW Dozen post.

My first name, I’ve been told, is the English version of the French name Jeanne and my last name is German. Neither name is common in the United States, where I live. As someone with a unique name, I’ve grown accustomed to people mispronouncing and misspelling it regularly. I used to find it deeply annoying, but at this point in my life I just smile and spell it out whenever someone is filling in a form or trying to look me up in the computer.

But.

I am a white, middle class, U.S. citizen living in the United States. My name is not common, but it is also not unusual in ways that are marked as ‘other’ in our society. People from racially or culturally diverse backgrounds, however, may have a different experience, often facing microaggressions or biases focused around a name that is said to be “weird,” “too long,” or “too hard to pronounce.” It’s no surprise that many of the books about someone learning to love their name feature a child from a minoritized culture. People’s names carry strong connections to culture and identity and may have historical, cultural, linguistic, or religious meanings. When someone mispronounces or makes fun of your name it can feel like they are devaluing these important connections and, in turn, devaluing you.

Children’s literature is a great resource for exploring the meaning of names, experiencing names from many different cultures and groups of people, and emphasizing why it’s important for both teachers and students to get names right. This collection of picturebooks features children from many cultures who learn to love their unique names.

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: Ag Jatkowska, Alma and How She Got Her Name, Always Anjali, Anoosha Syed, Ashanti, Call Me Little Echo Hawk, Constantia Manoli, erry Echohawk, Helena Ku Ree, Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow, Janine Schall, Jessica Blank, Ji Hyuk Kim, Jim Madsen, Juana Martinez-Neal, Lesléa Newman, Luisa Uribe, Magdalena Mora, Monica Mikai, My Name, My Name is a Story, My Name is Aviva, My Name is Long as a River, Sandhya Prabhat, Sheetal Sheth, Sora's Seashells, Stella Lim, Suma Subramaniam, Supriya Kelkar, Tara Anand, Thao, Thao Lam, That’s not My Name, Tomatoes in My Lunchbox, Your Name is a Song
• Descriptors: WOW Dozen