Books & Resources

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Current Global Conflicts: Palestinian Perspectives and Experiences, Part 2

by Seemi Aziz, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Father looks at photo album with three daughters.As I looked into Palestinian experiences in children’s literature, I discovered many significant examples. These examples speak to broader issues of displacement, refugees and oppression. These topics/issues are prevalent in the global sociopolitical atmosphere presently, more so now with the two ongoing wars: Ukraine/Russia and Palestine/Israel. If we research and go into depth on both these conflicts and wars, we come away with multiple ways of understanding the conflicts and realize that there is no one easy explanation that pigeonholes the conflicts.

The examples of children’s literature that I explore in this post shed light on Palestinian perspectives on the current conflict through a recent memoir and several nonfiction books. By combining these powerful examples of fiction and nonfiction, readers come away with new understandings. Continue reading →

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Current Global Conflicts: Palestinian Perspectives and Experiences, Part 1

by Seemi Aziz, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

A young girl reaches up to touch the olive at the end of a branch.News reports of global conflicts raise many questions and confusion for children who do not understand the history or broader context of these conflicts. Children’s books can provide children with perspectives on global conflicts, such as the current conflict between Israel and Palestine. This post highlights books that reflect Palestinian perspectives as part of a larger conversation in the field of the many perspectives, including Israeli voices, related to this conflict. Continue reading →

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Indigenous Stories of Being

By Angeline Hoffman, White Mountain Apache Tribe

A young girl sitting on a rock with her arms held up to the sky.Story is about the unique ways of teaching and learning as reflected through special connections to nature, family, community and ecology. It is understanding and acknowledging the connections and deep knowledge through teaching and learning about how life is.

Indigenous stories involve members of a community or small groups of relatives gathering together to hear stories told, mostly by an elder, to convey information about the specific Indigenous culture of the community. The stories, especially through the Indigenous language, support the maintenance of Native identity. Embedded in these stories is the important knowledge that we, as Native Americans from special tribal cultures, must acquire to survive and to conduct oneself appropriately. Both the narratives and the languages that convey them are place-based in the sense that they are tied to the land – especially the knowledge of where we came from, where we live, how we survive and our way of life. Continue reading →

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2024 Trends in K-12 Global Literature

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

A child walks behind a cat, and a large white blob walks behind the child.This month’s WOW Currents focuses on trends in global literature for young people published and/or distributed in the U.S. between July 2023 and July 2024. Each year, we identify new books published during this time period, examining the books and consulting book reviews to determine which texts are of most interest to K-12 educators. In this process of updating our global reading lists, we also gain a sense of current trends in the themes, topics and genres of global books being published for children and teens. Continue reading →

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Louise and Laura: Challenging our Assumptions of Indigenous and Pioneer Life

By Mandy Medvin, Elizabeth Ford, and Charlene Klassen Endrizzi, Westminster College, PA., retired faculty

A young girl with a bird on her shoulder stsands in front of a small house in the woods.“Who’s telling the story? What changes when someone else tells the story?” Videos like this one, “The Trouble with History,” from the Native New York exhibit, a branch of Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian, challenge students, teachers and parents to consider, “What if the story we are reading isn’t the only one?” And what if the text contains labels that marginalize specific groups?

This month we seek to move beyond a single, white Euro-centric lens on the Westward Movement, a common feature in many middle grade social studies’ textbooks. Louise Erdrich’s The Birchbark House series and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House novels, both aimed at middle grade readers, are set in the mid-late 1800s and offer a comparative lens on this time period in U.S. history, often called the “pioneer era.” Louise (1954-present) wrote her books based on her family research as a member of the Turtle Mountain band of Ojibwe, Anishinaabe people who lived in the Great Lakes region. Laura (1867 – 1957), born nearby in Wisconsin, provides an early white-centric perspective on the same historical time period and location. Juxtaposing these series offers a way to initiate conversations with students regarding two distinct ways of life and perspectives. Continue reading →

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Indigenous Family Stories

By Angeline Hoffman, White Mountain Apache Tribe

A family in a white car drive down a road, away from mountains.This month I celebrate global children’s books focused on Indigenous families. Today in the U.S. there are 574 different federally recognized Indigenous tribes. While many teachers see the usefulness of celebrating American Indians during October and November holidays (October 14, Indigenous Peoples’ Day and November – Indigenous Heritage Month), we need to move beyond single days and months to explore Indigenous cultures. Much like the hazards of limiting the study of African American life to Black History Month in February, I hope teachers will ponder how we can explore Indigenous families and life as a part of any literature, history, art or science exploration throughout the school year.

Strong Nations is a useful publisher as I continually search for Indigenous children’s books. My goal in working with fifth and sixth grade Apache and Navajo students is to share books that value their culture, thereby empowering them. This month I focus on five children’s books that center on Indigenous families. Continue reading →

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An On-going Struggle for Equal Voting Rights

By Charlene Klassen Endrizzi, Westminster College, retired, and Rebecca Ballenger, Worlds of Words, University of Arizona, Tucson

People from all backgrounds hold signs that say vote in multiple languagesJane Goodall recently outlined, “Every vote matters, more this year than perhaps any time in history.” As voters from the United States to South Africa, Mexico, India and beyond enter a major election year, Jane urges anyone who will listen to pause and consider each candidate’s record on a single issue–her/his/their efforts to support the health of our Earth. Yet we know U.S. voters will ponder additional issues, ranging from the economy and democracy to immigration, reproductive rights, foreign policy, gun rights, equality and more. Continue reading →

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Awards for Translation and Cultural Exchange with Korean Picturebooks

By Yoo Kyung Sung, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM

2021 Concurso de Traduccion de Libros Illustrados Coreanos y MexicanosThis month, I invite the WOW Currents audience to partake in global intercultural and language celebration events that unite young and adult readers with languages and cultures from contemporary nations across diverse countries. This edition of WOW Currents invites readers to take a closer look at select award-winning books from recent translation competitions, including Korean to Spanish, Spanish to Korean, Korean to Arabic, and Arabic to Korean languages. The award ceremonies for these competitions were held at the Korean Embassy in Mexico City and the Seoul International Book Exhibition, marking significant intercultural solidarity programs in the field of translation and cultural exchange. Continue reading →

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Celebrating New Authors and Illustrators at the 2024 Tucson Festival of Books

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

Two girls holding dolls with a hay bale behind themFestivals are an opportunity to connect with well-known authors who win awards and are on best-selling lists. Plenty of those authors are coming to the Tucson Festival of Books this year, such as Kate DiCamillo, Donna Barba Higuera, Roshani Chokshi, John Parra, Sayantani DasGupta, Jennifer Nielson, Kazu Kibuishi, R.L. Stine, Marissa Meyer, Shelby Mahurin, and Gene Luen Yang. They will appear on panels, solo sessions, and workshops, giving readers a chance to talk with the authors they admire and love to read.

What is often overlooked is that festivals are also an opportunity to meet new authors and illustrators who are making their mark on the field, adding their books as new favorites. Recent illustrators who have published picturebooks will appear on panels and give illustrator studios this year. Jonathan Nelson is the Diné illustrator of Forever Cousins (2022) and A Letter for Bob (2023), demonstrating his commitment to illustrating Native stories by Native authors. A Letter for Bob celebrates the treasured family car that has taken a young girl’s family through happy and sad times. In Lian Cho’s new picturebook, Oh, Olive! (2023), Olive loves to smear, spatter, and splash with a brush in each hand, but faces the displeasure of her parents who are serious artists, painting proper perfect shapes. Continue reading →

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Experience the 2024 Tucson Festival of Books

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

As a long-time attendee and presenter at professional conferences for educators, book festivals were a new genre for me when I first started working with the Tucson Festival of Books 14 years ago. I quickly realized that the audience was much broader for a festival, many of whom are parents, children and teens with different preferences than educators. A festival needs to balance authors who have popular appeal and write series books with authors who are critically acclaimed, and well-known authors with emerging authors. The sessions also need to offer laughter and playfulness as well as discussions of critical issues.

Over time, we have developed different types of sessions for the children/teen section of the festival to appeal to the different audiences. The overall festival has over 300 authors and 130,000 attendees. 65 of those authors are picturebook authors/illustrators, middle grade authors, graphic novel creators, and young adult authors, who present over 100 sessions. One strength of our program for children and teens is that many of the sessions are in rooms that seat 40-50 people to allow for more intimate interactions with authors, instead of only large auditoriums where authors are at a distance. This WOW Currents highlights the types of sessions and a few of the authors who are coming this March. Go to the festival website for a full list of authors and sessions for the entire festival. Continue reading →