WOW Recommends: Beatryce Prophecy

In this review Kathy Short and Marilyn Carpenter share their responses to The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo with illustrations by Sophie Blackall.

MARILYN: As soon as I finished this book, I eagerly read it again. With the first reading, I found the plot most engaging. On the second reading, I admired the author’s craft. The story takes place in the Middle Ages during a time of war. Five characters carry the story. First, the reader meets a monk, Brother Edik, who has written a prophecy about a girl who will unseat a king. Next, we are introduced to a cranky and fearsome goat, Answelica, who has a major role in the story as a protector of Beatryce, a young girl that Brother Edik finds ill, wounded and bloody curled up next to that goat, fast asleep. It turns out that the child has experienced a horrific trauma that has left her without any memory except that her name is Beatryce. As Brother Edik comes to know her he discovers that she can read and write which is dangerous because there is a law that says that no girls or women can read or write. Brother Edik shaves her head and disguises her as a young monk. Continue reading →

Imagination Friday with Raúl the Third

Meet Raúl the Third and hear about his newest ¡Vamos! book. ¡Vamos! Let’s Cross the Bridge is a joyful story about coming together and celebrating community. Traffic has come to a stop on a bridge and Little Lobo and his dog Bernabé are tired of waiting in their truck–until they have the idea of holding an epic party!

Raúl the Third introduces his new book and process of writing and illustrating, invite children to create their own stories and answer questions.

Host: Kathy Short, Professor of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies and Director of WOW
Panelists: Raúl the Third
Co-Sponsor: Tucson Festival of Books

Raúl the Third is an award-winning illustrator and the author/illustrator of ¡Vamos! Let’s Go To Market and ¡Vamos! Let’s Go Eat. He is also the illustrator for the Lowriders series by Cathy Camper and is working on a YA graphic novel with David Bowles. He grew up between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, México, and now lives in Boston.

Copies of the books featured on Imagination Fridays can be ordered from UArizona BookStores.

Imagination Fridays is co-sponsored by the Tucson Festival of Books and Worlds of Words/University of Arizona and will occur one Friday a month at 1:00-1:45 pm from September to December with a new author and/or illustrator to introduce a brand new book. Add excitement to Fridays with world-renowned children’s authors and illustrator to promote new books and encourage children as readers, writers, and illustrators.

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In Honor of Vivian Yenika-Agbaw

Our field lost a scholar of children’s literature, and we lost a treasured friend and colleague when Vivian Yenika-Agbaw passed away on September 20, 2021. Vivian was a professor of children’s and adolescent literature at Penn State University where she taught in both the residential and World campus programs. She grew up in Cameroon and remained connected both professionally and personally to these roots as she gathered supplies and resources for teachers in that country and wrote about West African and African Diaspora literature for young people through the critical lens of postcolonialism. She was concerned about issues of power and colonialism, not only in books from and about countries in Africa, but in other regions around the world whose literatures are seldom the focus of scholarship. Her research on representations of Africa in children’s books provided both historical and current critical analyses of trends and issues. Continue reading →

Digging Deeper into Migration Stories through MultiModal Text Sets

By Carol Brochin, Leah Durán, and Kathy G. Short, University of Arizona

This past summer, faculty in the College of Education at the University of Arizona virtually hosted a seminar for K-12 teachers sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Drawing teachers from across the U.S., we looked at the histories and movements of people in what is now Arizona and considered ways to invite students of all ages into our inquiries. Our institute, We the People: Migrant Waves in the Making of America, challenged the perception that migration is a recent negative phenomenon. This two-week virtual institute explored the continuous waves of migration in the U.S. through a case study of Arizona, the last continental state added to the union. We were particularly concerned with the stories often left out of traditional narratives of U.S. history, which are traditionally rooted in the thirteen colonies and so erase the experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latinx and other communities of color. Through interactions with narratives, authors, scholars and museums, our goal was for educators to gain knowledge and strategies to support their teaching by using inquiry strategies from the case study to research migrant waves in their own states.

Continue reading →

2021 Global Literature Trends: Books about Activism and Conservation

by Kathy G. Short, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

In a time of political division and global uncertainty, despair can be offset by hope through taking action to make a change; a perspective found in global books on activism and conservation. Instead of ignoring global issues or waiting for adults to take action, these books portray the commitment and actions of young people who act to make a difference. These themes go across nonfiction and fiction as well as across ages, providing young people with examples of real people who work for change and with story worlds in which characters act for a cause that matters to them. Continue reading →

2021 Global Literature: Refugee and Immigrant Experiences in Children’s and YA Literature

by Kathy G. Short, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

The experiences of refugees dominate the national news, most recently images of Central American asylum seekers at the Mexico/U.S. border and refugees from Afghanistan trying to board planes and attempting border crossings into Pakistan. These experiences also dominate children’s and young adult books, especially in the last ten years with many books about Syrian refugees and refugees from Mexico and Central America. The experiences of immigrant families and children are also increasingly depicted in literature, but instead of focusing on trauma, these books focus on children who navigate multiple cultural identities and locations. Continue reading →

2021 Trends in Global Literature for Children and Adolescents

By Kathy G. Short, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

This month, WOW Currents highlights the trends in global books published in the U.S. between Summer 2020 and 2021. The list was created by exploring new books and reading reviews to create an update of the K-12 global reading lists, fiction and nonfiction, to post on the Worlds of Words Center website. This update also provides an opportunity to identify trends and patterns across this annual collection of global books. This post overviews these trends and the weekly blogs over the month of September will examine one trend in more depth with examples of books. Continue reading →

Imagination Friday with Kevin Noble Maillard and Juana Martinez-Neal

Meet Kevin Noble Maillard and Juana Martinez-Neal to hear about their award-winning picturebook, Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story. Kevin and Juana will share the process of writing and illustrating their picturebook, invite children to create their own family stories and answer questions.

Imagination Fridays participants can order signed copies of the books featured at https://shop.uabookstore.arizona.edu/main/wildcats/TFOB/Children.

Host: Kathy Short, Professor of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies and Director of WOW
Panelists: Kevin Noble Maillard and Juana Martinez-Neal
Co-Sponsor: Tucson Festival of Books

Kevin Noble Maillard is the author of Fry Bread and a regular writer and former contributing editor to The New York Times. Currently based in Manhattan, he splits time between the city and upstate New York, where he is a tenured professor of law at Syracuse University. Originally from Oklahoma, he is an enrolled citizen of the Seminole Nation.

Juana Martinez-Neal is an illustrator of books for children, including the award-winning La Princesa and the Pea, Alma and How She Got Her Name and Fry Bread. Juana was born in Lima, Peru, where she grew up surrounded by amazing meals prepared by her mom and amazing paintings made by her dad and granddad. She now lives, eats and paints in Scottsdale, surrounded by her amazing children.

Imagination Friday is co-sponsored by the Tucson Festival of Books and Worlds of Words, University of Arizona College of Education and occurs Fridays from 1 to 1:40 p.m. through December 2020 with a different author or illustrator each week. Add some excitement to Fridays with world-renowned children’s authors and illustrator to promote new books and encourage children as readers, writers and illustrators.

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Imagination Friday with Molly Idle and Beth Ferry

Join Molly Idle and Beth Ferry to hear about their new picturebook, We Believe In You. Animals inspire their little ones to chase their dreams and reach for the stars. This stunning picturebook is about the joy of believing in yourself and in one another! Molly and Beth share the process of writing and illustrating their new book, invite children to create their own stories and answer questions.

Imagination Fridays participants can order signed copies of the books featured at https://shop.uabookstore.arizona.edu/main/wildcats/TFOB/Children.

Host: Kathy Short, Professor of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies and Director of WOW.
Panelists: Molly Idle and Beth Ferry
Co-Sponsor: Tucson Festival of Books

Beth Ferry is the New York Times bestselling author of Stick and Stone, illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld, The Scarecrow illustrated by The Fan Brothers, and many other books. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, three children and two bulldogs.

Molly Idle is the author and illustrator of the Caldecott Honor Book Flora and the Flamingo and the Flora series, the Rex series and Pearl. Molly lives in sunny Arizona with her marvelous, multi-generational family which includes her brilliant husband, two mercurial sons, two remarkable parents and a pair of snugly cats.

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Imagination Friday with Max Brallier

Meet Max Brallier, author of the Last Kids on Earth series. Max will share the highly anticipated sixth book in this bestselling series, The Last Kids on Earth and the Skeleton Road. In their latest adventure, Jack, June, Quint and Dirk go on a road trip to search for the villain Thrull and his skeleton army. The Last Kids on Earth is now available as a Netflix series. This webinar will include an activity and Q&A.

Imagination Fridays participants can order signed copies of the books featured at https://shop.uabookstore.arizona.edu/main/wildcats/TFOB/Children.

Host: Kathy Short, Professor of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies and Director of WOW
Panelists: Max Brallier
Co-Sponsor: Tucson Festival of Books

Max Brallier is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. His books and series include The Last Kids on Earth, Eerie Elementary, Mister Shivers, Galactic Hot Dogs, and Can YOU Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? He is a writer and producer for Netflix’s Emmy-award-winning adaptation of The Last Kids on Earth. Max lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. Visit him at MaxBrallier.com.

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