Volume IX, Issue 1: Open Theme
Editor’s Note:

This issue of WOW Review includes a host of picture books, a graphic novel, and three wonderful chapter books designed to engage readers in pondering situations that many will not experience in their lifetimes. The picture books Maddi’s Fridge, The Invisible Boy, and Their Great Gift invite readers to consider lives that are less than optimal. Forced deportation and immigration, invisibility, and poverty are themes explored in these works. Two other texts, The Tortoise and the Soldier and The Whispering Town, are books about the great wars that ravaged the world. It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel and Baddawi share stories about identity and finding oneself when displaced from home. The Way Home Looks Now presents how displacement can come from a missing family member and the gap they leave behind.

Also included in this issue are The Night Gardener and Those Shoes, two picture books that highlight the importance of small acts that encourage and enfranchise others who are marginalized in some way. Finally, the wonderfully vibrant Night of the Moon: A Muslim Holiday Story reminds us that home exists within family traditions and beliefs that transcend geographic boundaries, and Tulipán: The Puerto Rican Giraffe suggests our identities are not restricted to what others may say or think about us.

The next issue of WOW Review invites readers to share what they have read in response to the theme, Conflict, Dissonance, and Resolution. Conflict can result when challenging or disrupting the status quo, while dissonance may result from a change in the status quo. Consider the books you have read that address conflict, dissonance, and resolution in response to the status quo or a change in the status quo and submit a review, due November 1, 2016.

Holly Johnson, Editor