Thanhhà Lại gained many readers with her award-winning novel-in-verse, Inside Out and Back Again. Her newest novel, Butterfly Yellow, aims at an older audience of middle grade and teen readers, but, like her first novel, reaches inward to grab the reader’s heart. Continue reading
Kathy Short
Imagination Friday with Rashin Kheiriyeh
Watch (or re-watch) Imagination Friday with Rashin Kheiriyeh below!
Join WOW and the Tucson Festival of Books to meet Rashin Kheiriyeh, author/illustrator of a new picturebook, Bahar the Lucky. Bahar is determined to help her family earn more money than what she makes selling rugs at the local bazaar. So, she decides to become a fortune teller. After some lucky “accidents” telling correct fortunes, the king has summoned her to the palace to be his fortune teller. At this event, Kheiriyeh will talk about creating Bahar, the Lucky, invite children to draw their own designs 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: Rashin Kheiriyeh
Co-Sponsor: Tucson Festival of Books
Rashin Kheiriyeh is an internationally recognized, award-winning illustrator/author, animator and painter who has 21 years of experience in publication and broadcasting. She has published over eighty children’s books in countries such as United State, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Germany, Spain, South Korea, China, Brazil, India and Iran.
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.
Imagination Friday with Jon Scieszka and Steven Weinberg
Watch (or re-watch) Imagination Friday with Jon Scieszka and Steven Weinberg below!
Meet the author and illustrator of AstroNuts, a new series by Jon Scieszka and Steven Weinberg. This laugh-out-loud series with jet-propelled zaniness also has a serious side with facts about climate change and the environment. This high-energy book contains full-color collages and follows the AstroNuts on a new mission to find a planet fit for human life after we have finally made the Earth unlivable. Jon and Steven will talk about the two books in this new series, invite children to write and draw their own mission and answer questions.
Make your own story with collage art! Try the activity from this Imagination Friday by visiting this page on the AstroNuts website: https://www.astronuts.space/make-your-own-art. Download their templates, put them together in your own way with your own story and then email your art to us at wow@email.arizona.edu. We will share them with Jon and Steven. Maybe your art will be included on the AstroNuts website!
Host: Kathy Short, Professor of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies and Director of WOW.
Panelists: Jon Scieszka and Steven Weinberg
Co-Sponsor: Tucson Festival of Books
Jon Scieszka is best known for his bestselling picture books, including The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! and The Stinky Cheese Man. He is also the founder of guysread.com and a champion force behind guyslisten.com, and was the first National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature. He lives in Brooklyn.
Steven Weinberg writes and illustrates kids’ books about dinosaurs, roller coasters, beards and chainsaws. He lives in the Catskills in New York.
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.
Register for our next Imagination Friday with Rashin Kheiriyeh!
Locating Resources on Global Children’s and YA Literature
By Kathy Short, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Many authors, illustrators, publishers and literacy organizations offer valuable resources during this time of mandated on-line learning. An ongoing issue, however, is that only a few of these resources highlight global literature, books set in global cultures outside of the U.S. Our goal for this website is to support educators and families in engaging readers with global literature to encourage intercultural understanding across cultures. If you are a teacher educator searching for on-line readings and book lists for your courses or a teacher creating new inquiry units that are global in focus, the following resources can support your work. You can also use these features as examples for students to create their own reviews, vignettes or book recommendations. Continue reading
2020 Global Books: Trends in the Portrayals of World War II
Kathy G. Short, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Books about World War II continue to trend in global literature for children and adolescents. The 2020 global reading lists contain many books for middle grade and young adult readers that reflect on-going interest in this time period. The majority are historical fiction and focus on World War II events in Europe, but a new trend is historical fiction that focuses on events in Asia. Continue reading
2020 Global Books: Fantasy Based in Many Cultural Traditions
Kathy G. Short, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
For many years, fantasy primarily originated in English-speaking countries and featured European traditions and White protagonists. The popularity of Harry Potter and the Hunger Games and the many books based in Greek and Roman mythology reflect this trend. In The Dark Fantastic, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (2019) argues that fantasy offers readers portals into real and imagined worlds but bars the doors for people of color or subjects them to marginalization and violence. Thomas sees this gap as both a lack of representation and a lack of imagination. Continue reading
2020 Global Books: Picturebooks about Contemporary Experiences
Kathy G. Short, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
A long-term issue in global literature is the lack of books showing contemporary experiences, leading to misconceptions that other cultures are set back in time in comparison to the U.S. The global novels for middle grade and young adult readers identified on the 2020 Global Reading Lists are primarily historical fiction or fantasy with the exception of refugee books, a continuation of that problematic trend. In contrast, picturebooks for younger readers include many contemporary depictions of everyday life in a range of global cultures, including Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, Japan, China, Korea, India, Tibet, Iran, Syria and Indigenous Canada. Continue reading
2020 Global Books: Refugee Experiences in Children’s and YA Literature
Kathy G. Short, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Refugee experiences continue to dominate global children’s and YA literature in books published between June 2019 and 2020. As in previous years, many contain heart-wrenching stories of refugees experiencing displacement due to violence and war and their journeys of hardship and loss. A smaller number focus on life in refugee camps and detention centers, a sense of belonging in a new place, and home as two places in one’s heart. Continue reading
2020 Trends in Global Literature for Children and Adolescents
by Kathy G. Short, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
This month, WOW Currents highlights the trends in global books published in the U.S. between Summer 2019 and 2020. Each summer, I work on an update for the K-12 global reading lists, fiction and nonfiction, to post on the Worlds of Words website. Exploring possible book titles, reading reviews and analyzing themes provides insights into patterns across this annual collection of global books. This post overviews these trends and the subsequent weekly posts each examine one trend in more depth with examples of books. Continue reading
Worlds of Words Acquires Original Art for “The Caged Birds of Phnom Penh” from Ronald Himler
By Alexandria Hulslander, Worlds of Words Intern
Ronald Himler is an award–winning illustrator with a passion for the process of creating art. A new acquisition of Himler’s work features original watercolor and gouache panels from The Caged Birds of Phnom Penh. The entire set of illustrations for the book is on display through December 20 at Worlds of Words in the University of Arizona College of Education.
