Americas

Materials from the Americas

The Mystery Of The Monarchs: How Kids, Teachers, And Butterfly Fans Helped Fred And Norah Urquhart Track The Great Monarch Migration

Young Fred Urquhart was fascinated by insects, especially his favorite, the monarch butterfly. He wondered where monarchs spent the winter. No one knew. After he became an bug scientist, Fred and his wife, Norah, tagged hundreds of butterflies, hoping to solve the mystery of the monarchs. But they soon discovered that they needed help. They started a “butterfly family,” a community of children, teachers, and nature enthusiasts from three countries, Canada, the United States and Mexico, to answer the question: Where do the monarchs go?

The Mystery of the Monarchs was the WOW Recommends: Book of the Month for June 2023.

The Gilded Ones #2: The Merciless Ones

The second book in the series, The Merciless Ones follows Deka after she’s freed the goddesses of Otera and discovered who she really is…but war is waging across the kingdom, and the real battle has only just begun. For there is a dark force growing in Otera—a merciless power that Deka and her army must stop.

Yet hidden secrets threaten to destroy everything Deka has known. And with her own gifts changing, Deka must discover if she holds the key to saving Otera… or if she might be its greatest threat.

Saving Earth: Climate Change And The Fight For Our Future

A timely and important illustrated nonfiction guide for middle grade readers about the history of our fight against climate change, and how young people today can rise to action.

Notebook Keeper

After traveling to Tijuana, Mexico, Noemi and her mother are denied entry at the border and must find the refugee in charge of the notebook, an unofficial ledger of those waiting to cross into the United States. Includes author’s note.

The Notebook Keeper was featured in the WOW Currents The Power of Home: Promise or Uncertainty? Part II.

Echoes Of Grace

On the Texas-Mexico border, 18-year-old Grace’s relationship with her older sister Mercy is fractured when Mercy’s 2-year-old son dies in an accident, bringing to the surface old family traumas and literal ghosts as the family struggles to heal.

This book is featured in Season 1, Episode 6 of the WOW Reads podcast.

The Second Chance Of Benjamin Waterfalls

Benjamin Waterfalls comes from a broken home, and the quickest fix he’s found for his life is to fill that emptiness with stuff he steals and then sells. But he’s been caught one too many times, and when he appears before a tough judge, his mother proposes sending him to boot camp at the Ojibwe reservation where they used to live. Soon he is on his way to Grand Portage, Minnesota, to live with his father, the man Benny hasn’t seen in years. Not only is boot camp not what he expects, but his rehabilitation seems to be in the hands of the tribal leader’s daughter, who wears a mask. Why? Finding the answer to this and so many other questions prove tougher than any military style boot camp. Will answers be enough for Benny to turn his life around and embrace his second chance?

Diamond Park

When four Mexican American teenagers from Houston travel to Diamond Park to buy a 1959 Chevy Impala from Magaña’s godfather, something goes very wrong, and one of them, Susi, ends up arrested for murder; convinced that the real killer is a drug trafficker called Anaconda, Flaco and Magaña head to Mexico hunting for him to clear Susi’s name but in the process of kidnapping Anaconda Flaco discovers how little he understands about what really happened in Diamond Park.