Contact Rebecca Ballenger, Associate Director of Worlds of Words
We did it! Thank you for your support attending and promoting our event with author Karen S. Chow, listening to the WOW Reads podcast, and donating to ensure the program continues for another year. We appreciate you!
Photo by Bob Bingham Photography
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WOW Currents is a space to talk about forward-thinking trends in global children’s and adolescent literature and how we use that literature with students. “Currents” is a play on words for trends and timeliness and the way we talk about social media. We encourage you to participate by leaving comments and sharing this post with your peers. To view our complete offerings of WOW Currents, please visit its archival stream.
This month’s WOW Currents focuses on trends in global literature for young people published and/or distributed in the U.S. between July 2023 and July 2024. Each year, we identify new books published during this time period, examining the books and consulting book reviews to determine which texts are of most interest to K-12 educators. In this process of updating our global reading lists, we also gain a sense of current trends in the themes, topics and genres of global books being published for children and teens. 
Kapaemahu is a multilayered picturebook that leaves the reader with much to contemplate. Based on a traditional Hawaiian legend, this captivating picturebook begins by transporting the reader to the days before recorded history, the time of storytelling, long before the colonization of Hawaii. In that long ago time, four Tahitians journeyed across the Pacific Ocean and arrived on the shores of Waikiki on the island of Oʻahu. These visitors were māhū, two-spirited beings who were neither male nor female but “a mixture of both in mind, heart, and spirit.” The māhū were favored by the Gods “with skill in the science of healing.” They healed many of the islanders and to honor the māhū, the people erected four great stones. Before vanishing from the island, the māhū transferred their healing powers into these four stones. Following the telling of the history of the māhū, the story moves the reader ahead seven hundred years in history to witness the impact of colonization upon the stones and subsequently the culture of the Native Hawaiians. The book ends with the call to remember the story of the māhū declaring, “When you share that story, you honor it.” 
Jane Goodall recently outlined, 