Not My Girl

Two years ago, Margaret left her Arctic home for the outsiders’ school. Now she has returned and can barely contain her excitement as she rushes towards her waiting family — but her mother stands still as a stone. This strange, skinny child, with her hair cropped short, can’t be her daughter. “Not my girl!” she says angrily.

Fox’s Garden

One snowy night, a fox loses its way, entering a village. Chased away by the grown ups, Fox takes shelter in a greenhouse. A little boy sees this from his window. Without hesitating, he brings a basket of food to the greenhouse, where he leaves it for the fox. His gift is noticed and the night becomes a garden of new life, nourished by compassion and kindness.

Los Tres Reyes (A Caballo)/ The Three Kings (On Horseback)

Una historia antigua, relatada en el estilo de la decima puertorriquena. Los Tres Reyes Magos, Gaspar, Melchor y Baltasar, llegan a Puerto Rico en una nube voladora. Se les aparece un caballo que los lleva a repartir sus regalos por toda la isla. A partir de entonces, los Reyes visitan Puerto Rico a caballo, en vez de en camello. An old tale retold in the lively Puerto Rican folksong style called decima. The Three Kings, Gaspar, Melchor and Baltasar, reach Puerto Rico on a flying cloud. They are met by a horse that helps them distribute their gifts to children all over the island. Ever since then, the Kings visit Puerto Rican homes on horseback, rather than on camels.

I Remember Beirut

Zeina Abirached grew up in Beirut in the 1980s as fighting between Christians and Muslims divided the city streets. With striking black-and-white artwork, Abirached recalls the details of ordinary life inside a war zone.

End Of the Line

Five-year-old Beatrix looks on in horror as the soldier forces her mother off the tram. It is 1942 in Amsterdam, and everyone knows what happens to Jews who are taken away by the Nazis. The soldier turns his attention to Beatrix, when suddenly, the ticket-taker, Lars Gorter, blurts out that she is his niece. With his brother Hans, the tram conductor, they manage to rescue the child from the same fate as her mother.The two elderly brothers realize that they are now in charge of the little girl. They are at a loss, after all, neither one has ever married, let alone has children. They know that harboring a Jew could cost them their lives, but in desperation, they turn to a neighbor, Mrs. Vos, for help. But even these kindly rescuers cannot shield Beatrix totally from the horrors of war.

Shackleton’s Journey

William Grill weaves a detailed visual narrative of Shackleton’s journey to Antarctica. Grill’s beautiful use of colored pencils and vibrant hues effortlessly evokes the adventure and excitement that surrounded the expedition. His impeccably researched drawings, rich with detail, fastidiously reproduce the minutiae of the expedition.

My Heart Is Laughing

This is a story about Dani, who’s always happy. She’s unhappy too, now and then, but she doesn’t count those times. But she does miss her best friend Ella who moved to another town. Since then no one is allowed to sit at Ella’s desk. She’s not one to give up hope, even when everything seems hopeless.

Lost Girl Found

For Poni, life in her small village in southern Sudan is simple and complicated at the same time. But then the war comes and there is only one thing for Poni to do. Run. Run for her life. Driven by the sheer will to survive and the hope that she can somehow make it to the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, Poni sets out on a long, dusty trek across the east African countryside with thousands of refugees. In Kakuma she is almost overwhelmed by the misery that surrounds her. Poni realizes that she must leave the camp at any cost. Her destination is a compound in Nairobi. There, if she is lucky, she can continue her education and even one day convince authorities that she is worthy to go to the land of opportunity called America. Even more than the dramatic events of the story, it is Poni’s frank and single-minded personality that carries this novel. In a heartbreaking final twist, she finds her mother just as she is about to leave for the U.S., and must make the hardest decision of all.

Featured in WOW Review Volume X, Issue 4.

The London Jungle Book

The book is a visual travelogue that both mimics and subverts the typical colonial encounter. With radical innocence and great sophistication, Bhajju brings the signs of the Gond forest to bear on the city, turning London into an exotic jungle, a clever beastiary. The London Underground becomes a sinuous snake, Big Ben transforms into a rooster crowing the time, and an airplane — the first Bhajju ever encountered — is compared to an elephant miraculously flying through the air. It is rare to encounter a truly original vision that is capable of startling us into reexamining familiar sights. By breathing the ancient spirit of wonder back into the act of travel, The London Jungle Book does just that.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume VII, Issue 4