Introduction and Editors’ Note
Generally, we appreciate some form of stability in our lives. It is nice to know how much money we have in the bank, and that the authority figures in our lives are caring no matter what the situation. But what happens when life as we know it is upended? This collection of titles looks at children whose lives drastically change and how they react.
Several books describe children who lose a parent. Both Empty and Me and Lost in the Clouds portray the varying emotions involved in grieving a death. Several titles portray historical conflicts and how children survive the uprooting so they can put new roots down in a new place, whether moving from Spain to Venezuela in Different, or moving from India to Pakistan in The Moon from Dehradun: A Story of Partition. Some families choose to stay and resist consequences. In Safiyyah’s War the protagonist works with her father, the Director of the Grand Mosque in Paris, to save Jewish families during WWII.
Not all challenges are on a political scale but are still significant and impact how children grow up. In Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir, young Pedro goes on an epic 2000-mile trip in an RV with his parents and eight siblings to pick up his grandfather who lives in Mexico. Along the way he hones his skills as an artist, but also learns about who he is as a Mexikid, a kid who is not all Mexican or all American. Listen: How Evelyn Glennie, a Deaf Girl, Changed Percussion tells the extraordinary story of Glennie who lost her hearing completely as a young girl yet grew up to become a world-class percussionist. She discovers that when she plays percussive instruments in her bare feet, she can feel the vibrations of the music through the floor. In contrast, Out of the Blue describes the imaginative wonder of a surprise. A young boy lives in a house where there is a high degree of stability. But what happens when a huge bear shows up and wants to play?
This issue concludes with the work of Eleanor Roosevelt and the hope for stability through the UN Declaration of Human Rights. In Small Places Close to Home: A Children’s Declaration of Rights, Deborah Hopkinson and Kate Gardiner take the rights afforded to everyone and talk about what those rights mean in everyday life to children around the world.
We invite you to read and think with these titles and submit a review for future issues.
Volume 16, Issue 4 (Summer 2024- submission deadline June 1, 2024) – Themed issue on technology and inventiveness in our lives. The editors welcome reviews of global or multicultural children’s or young adult books published within the last three years that address technology and human invention in daily life, books that approach technology as the practical application of scientific knowledge to solve problems and fulfill human needs, and science fiction that integrates future technologies.
Volume 17, Issue 1 (Fall 2024 – submission deadline: August 15, 2024) – Open theme. 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.
Susan Corapi, co-editor
María V. Acevedo-Aquino, co-editor
© 2024 by María V. Acevedo-Aquino and Susan Corapi
WOW Review, Volume XVI, Issue 3 by Worlds of Words is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on work by Susan Corapi and María V. Acevedo-Aquino at https://wowlit.org/on-line-publications/review/xvi-3/2/
WOW review: reading across cultures
ISSN 2577-0527