Introduction and Editors’ Note

This exciting issue, consisting of eight picturebooks and a pictorial information book, invites readers to reflect on the importance of building, maintaining, and belonging to a community. A community brings people together to support each other in facing challenges. We have a natural desire to belong, and being part of a community fulfills that need by connecting us in a variety of relationships.

Relationships are created quickly through crisis, as demonstrated in All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team by Christina Soontornvat. The detailed text describes the incredible community of multinational rescuers, cave divers, medics, engineers, hydrologists, military specialists, farmers, and volunteers who collaborated exhaustively to save Coach Ek and his team of teenage boys from the flooded caves of Tham Luang Nang Non, the Cave of the Sleeping Lady in northern Thailand.

Four picturebooks explore the community built with familiar friends and family. In Ho’onani: Hula Warrior by Heather Gale and Mika Song, community is built among dancers who accept everyone, particularly Ho’onani who sees herself as a māhū (in between) with the desire to take on a role usually reserved for kāne (boys). In The World Belonged to Us, Jacqueline Woodson reminisces about summers in Brooklyn, where children playing outside together was a celebration of the culturally and linguistically diverse community they lived in. In A Day with No Words, Tiffany Hammond draws on her own experience of being a person with autism to tell the story of a young boy living and participating in a community that normalizes the use of augmentative communication devices to support verbal communication. In Hundred Years of Happiness, Thanhhà Lại draws on her own family relationships to write about memory loss in a grandparent and the efforts family members make to stay connected and help Bà remember.

The remaining four books describe the process of building community when everything that was home has changed. In The Arabic Quilt: An Immigrant Story, Aya Khalil and Anait Semirdzhyan use the perspective of a young Egyptian girl to describe how her teacher in her new homeland builds an affirming classroom community that supports linguistic diversity. In This is Not My Home, Eugenia Yoh and Vivienne Chang address Lily’s reverse immigration experience as she moves to Taiwan, where her mother grew up, and seeks ways to find herself and belong to Ah Ma’s beloved cultural community. In The Words We Share, Jack Wong portrays Angie and her father as language brokers for each other, using their linguistic skills to problem-solve as they adapt to living in a community of immigrants in Canada. In Me and My Fear, Francesca Sanna introduces a young girl who learns that while fear can protect her from harm, when uncontrolled it can prevent her from growing, learning, and enjoying her life in a new community.

We invite you to read and reflect on the diversity of communities represented in these stories, and how a sense of community is created or maintained.

Please consider submitting a review for our future issues. The editors welcome reviews of children’s or young adult books that highlight intercultural understanding and global perspectives around these themes:

Volume 16, Issue 2 – Themed issue on multicultural or global biographies, autobiographies, memoirs and/or fictionalized biographies (Winter 2023) – submission deadline December 15, 2023. The editors welcome reviews of global or multicultural children’s or young adult books published within the last three years that highlight multicultural or global biographies, autobiographies, memoirs and/or fictionalized biographies.

Volume 16, Issue 3 – Open theme (Spring 2024) – submission deadline: February 15, 2024. The editors welcome reviews of global or multicultural children’s or young adult books published within the last three years that highlight intercultural understanding and global perspectives.

María V. Acevedo-Aquino, co-editor

Susan Corapi, co-editor

© 2023 by María V. Acevedo-Aquino and Susan Corapi