Movement, Transition, and Change across Time

This issue of WOW Review is filled with amazing books addressing movement, transition, and change over time. With both picture book and chapter formats, the reviews highlight books that cross genres, including historical fiction, informational text, realistic fiction, and graphic memoir. These books present readers with experiences from around the world, including China, Russia, Turkey, Mexico, India, Israel, Ghana, and the United States. What is especially helpful is the additional texts each reviewer has included that readers might find of use in a classroom.

Books about movement include Xochitl and the Flowers, Powder Necklace, and Dance of the Banished. Each highlights the changes that occur within the protagonists when they must move from one country to another. Movement is also highlighted in two informational texts, Mad about Monkeys and Watch Out for Flying Kids! about the movement of beasts and children growing up within their own cultural groups. By Day, By Night is a lovely picture book that highlights the transition from day until night as the sun circles the earth. And then there are books about change over time. Those include A Year without Mom, The Seventh Most Important Thing, Fiona’s Lace, Little White Duck, and In the New World: A Family in Two Centuries, all of which take readers on journeys into how time and movement come together to create something new. The journey is not always pleasant, but there is something to learn.

All of these books open the doors to learning about others as well as ourselves. What different lives we all lead and look what it took for us to get here! Enjoy!

The next volume of WOW Reviews is due February 15, 2016, and is an open theme. Think about sharing your winter reading with the rest of us.

Holly Johnson, Editor.