WOW Recommends: Spirit Sleuths, How Magicians and Detectives Exposed the Ghost Hoaxes

For many people, October includes activities around spirits, ghosts and supernatural beings. On a related theme, although not to take away from the fantasy and fun of autumn, this month’s recommended book is Spirit Sleuths, How Magicians and Detectives Exposed the Ghost Hoaxes. Author Gail Jarrow invites readers to investigate the history behind particular supernatural activities.

This account begins in 1848 with two sisters in upstate New York who claimed that mysterious tappings in their house were communications from ghosts. As this story grew and traveled to nearby communities, the girls gained popularity, as did the séances they held. The author provides narrative detail that describes the experiences of their family. Jarrow continues her account to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when other people such as Ira and William Davenport, Henry Keller, and William Mumler claimed supernatural powers. The stories of their mystic experiences are documented in narrative form and include particular seemingly magical events, such as spirit cabinets, spirit photographs, planchette which led to the Ouija Boards, mind reading and fortune-telling. Each chapter ends with a section titled “How Did They Do It?”

These fraudulent spiritualists traveled nationally and internationally, holding meetings and giving false hope to grieving individuals that they could communicate with their dead loved ones. Eventually, suspicion of these experiences led to exposure of spiritual mediums and the fraudulent opportunities they provided emotional people. Continue reading →

WOW Recommends: The House Before Falling Into The Sea

The House Before Falling Into the Sea by Ann Suk Wang is a picturebook that tells a story from Korean history that is seldom found in children’s books. In 1950, the Korean War broke out. North and South Korea were at war for 3 years. People fled southward to escape from the war. Korea is geographically a peninsula, with Busan located at the southern tip of the peninsula. Beyond Busan, there is no further land to which people could flee; it was the last refuge on the peninsula.

In the story, Kyung’s family has long resided near Busan, next to the sea. Her family has owned a cozy house shielded from the war which, fortunately, had not reached that far. However, Kyung’s parents opened their home to the refugees fleeing from the war. Kyung’s home is not intended to be a shelter, yet it became a sanctuary for the refugees. Kyung’s family welcomed them with open arms and shared their intimate space. Continue reading →

WOW Recommends: The Enigma Girls

The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candace Fleming is an outstanding contribution to the history of World War II. Fleming tells the true story of the Girls who worked secretly at Bletchley Park, a World War II cryptology center in Britain. “There the team gathered intelligence of the most crucial nature. They strove to outwit the Nazis and break into German codes and ciphers.”

The hundreds of Girls, some of them as young as sixteen, and young women who worked there struggled to decode the messages sent by the Nazi forces. In doing so they made a major impact on the outcome of the war. Some estimates concluded that the work at Bletchley Park shortened the war by two years.

When they went to work at Bletchely Park, each of the workers were told, “You will never mention the name of this place, not to your family, not to your friends, not to anyone you may meet… You will never disclose to anyone the nature of the work you will be doing. Nor will you mention anything about the location of the place.” Each worker had to sign a document. They were told, “This is the Official Secrets Act. It clearly states that if you disclose the slightest information about this place or you work… you will committing TREASON.”

For that reason no one told about their war work or the place where they worked until many years later. Continue reading →

WOW Recommends: Disagreement

Disagreement by Nani Brunini is a thought-provoking visual portrayal of the evolution, consequences and resolution of a disagreement. Originally published in Portugal as Discórdia, Brunini uses a limited color palette to visually convey the way a disagreement began with a thought exchange between two individuals, but eventually sucks in and escalates to involve a whole group of people shouting at each other, and becoming consumed with the disagreement.

Brunini starts and ends the story on the end pages, using double-page spreads throughout the book. The story begins with a young woman offering a thought bubble about something, represented by a small blue nest of squiggly lines. On the following spread her male companion offers a response, represented with orange blurry lines and smudges. On the next spread the blue nest and orange smudge become bigger as the characters put hands on hips and stand firm. Two characters watch from the side at first, but on the following spread they join in with their own thoughts which have become even bigger as the characters ball their fists and point fingers. On the next spread the disagreement with now six individuals spills across half of the image, the orange and blue weaving in and out and on top of each other. Each following spread adds characters contributing to the disagreement until the disagreement becomes personified as an enormous cat-like monster that chases and consumes the individuals. Continue reading →

WOW Recommends: Amil and the After

Amil and the After by Veera Hiranandani is a companion novel to her Newbery Honor book, The Night Diary. That first book told how the twelve-year-old, twins, Amil and Nisha with their father and grandmother, made a harrowing escape from their family home because the British partitioned India in 1947. That meant that since the family were Hindus, they had to leave what became Pakistan since it just for Muslims after the partition. These historical fiction novels about events that few American children are acquainted with will give young readers insights about how those past events influence what is happening in today’s world.

“That’s when India became free from British rule, partitioned into two countries, and Pakistan was born. Most Muslims went to Pakistan. Most Hindus, Sikhs, and other non-Muslims went to India, and everyone started fighting and killing one another. Many starved or became ill and died on the journey.” (p. 5 Amil and the After.) Continue reading →

WOW Recommends: Kapaemahu

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.” Continue reading →

WOW Recommends: Okinawa

Originally published in Japan, Susumu Higa’s historical fiction manga Okinawa brings to life the experiences of Okinawans during World War II and the post-war experiences of both younger and older generations. This book binds together two of Higa’s previously published works: Sword of Sand (1995) and Mabui (2010). These narratives are told through illustrations and dialogue, along with onomatopoeia to emphasize actions, in the format of manga. Telling these stories through manga, a Japanese-style of visual storytelling like comics or graphic novels, combines the unique experiences of Okinawan people with the popular Japanese style of storytelling, bringing international readers both the popular culture of the dominant mainland Japan and the voices of a smaller, lesser known community. The United States Board of Books for Young People (USBBY) named Okinawa one of the Outstanding International Books (OIB) of 2024. Continue reading →

WOW Recommends: The Blue Book of Nebo

The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Steffan Ros is a profoundly moving young adult novella. Originally written in Welsh, it is a gentle and raw tale of a family’s survival in an isolated house in Northwest Wales after some kind of horrific disaster. The story is told through alternate journal entries written by Dylan, a young teenager, and his mother, Rowenna. They share a journal, which they call The Blue Book of Nebo, but they agree not to read each other’s entries. Continue reading →

WOW Recommends: Welcome to the Wonder House

In Welcome to the Wonder House, a book of poetry by noted poets Georgia Heard and Rebecca Kai Dotlich, readers are invited to explore twelve rooms filled with poems and objects. The poems will inspire creativity and wonder in young readers. In each room, readers can become historians, scientists, mathematicians, astronauts, architects, geologists, artists or writers while contemplating topics such as nature, space and ancient history, as well as ordinary items. For example, in the Curiosity Room, poems and yellow tinted and cream-colored pictures of dinosaur fossils, planets and meteor collisions spark readers’ interests in natural resources and planets. The poem titles demonstrate the span of resources: Why do diamonds wink / and shine?/ What is quartz?/ What is lime? / What fossils still / sleep underground? / How does our Earth keep spinning around? (p. 4). In the Nature Room, readers explore a stormy sky with rain and thunder: Thunder drums the skin of sky, / striking / an / electric / scar / from cloud to cloud. (p. 12). All poems cover science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) topics and will be a great addition to STEAM lessons for all age groups. Continue reading →

WOW Recommends: The Kingdom Over The Sea

The Kingdom Over the Sea by Zohra Nabi is a fantasy adventure that begins in an ordinary seaside town in the U.K. and quickly (and chaotically) sails away to Zehaira, a world of alchemy and sorcery. At home in the U.K., 12-year-old Yara and her mother share a language and culture seemingly to themselves. Yara’s documents indicate a start in Iraq, but Mama has been vague about their past. The more Yara asks, the more painful it becomes for Mama to answer. She promises to tell Yara when she gets older.

But then Mama dies, leaving a cryptic letter with instructions and no answers. Yara must leave the home she knows. As she flees town, Yara encounters racism and xenophobia directed towards an Iraqi family on the bus. When the conflict passes, Yara realizes they do not speak the special language she shares with Mama. The experience reinforces Yara’s feeling of not belonging. Yara is left alone to discover the truth about her past and heritage in a magical new world. To get to Zehaira, Yara is swept off by a frightening ferryman over a storming sea that Nabi likens to the twister that takes Dorothy to the world of Oz. Like Dorothy, Yara searches for home, only it’s a home she’s never known. In her effort to retain her cultural identity when home is fragile, Yara desperately searches to understand her heritage and to find community. Continue reading →

Worlds of Words

International Collection of Children’s and Adolescent Literature

WOW Recommends