Introduction and Editors’ Note
Over the last 40 years, technology has radically changed how we explore, gather information, perform tasks, communicate, and even socialize. Technology tools help us solve huge problems that impact daily life, and help us answer small questions that make us wonder. But for all its advantages, technology also adds new layers and stressors in our lives. This group of titles explores those layers. Some are based in the real world but others introduce imaginative worlds that are currently outside of our reality.
Titles are arranged alphabetically in each issue of WOW Review, but appropriately this issue starts out with the beginnings of technology in Afterward, Everything Was Different which takes place in the Pleistocene era. An early artist uses a charcoal tool to record the clan’s history on the walls of a cave, preserving for posterity the story of their life as hunters and gatherers. The second title, Ain’t Burned All the Bright, moves forward many millennia to 2020 and a family using technology during the COVID-19 pandemic for entertainment, communication, and health.
Several titles feature advances in technology precipitated by conflict or a town crisis. The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II chronicles the stories of teens who were part of the efforts to use Bomba, the early computer used to decode messages sent by Nazi military leaders. During the same global conflict, Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer describes how Ross defied categories as a woman and a Cherokee to become an engineer involved in creating the designs for the P-38 Lightning Fighter. Later on, she was a key player in the secret plans designing the technology needed for space flight. Set in a different kind of crisis, Zero Waste: How One Community is Leading a World Recycling Revolution describes how the town of Kamikatsu in Japan dealt with the pervasive odor of their landfill and the fumes of burning garbage in a 20 year effort to recycle, reuse, and reduce to the point of zero waste.
Several titles deal with futuristic technology. A Rover’s Story is told from the perspective of Resilience, a Mars rover who accumulates facts but also learns about emotions such as trust. In City Under the City, a young girl named Bix escapes her world of all-seeing roaming eyes that scrutinize and direct daily life. Through a crack in a wall she tumbles into an ancient city in which she discovers a different way of living that includes a library where she can joyfully choose what she wants to read.
One final title connects technology with magical realism. Catfish Rolling is set within the context of the devastating earthquake in Japan that caused three nuclear reactors to melt down. The 9.1 earthquake actually shifted the axis of the planet, impacting the passage of time. In this science fiction novel, the quake breaks and shifts time, and Sora and her scientist father have to work together to figure out how to reunite with family members lost in the quake.
We hope you will dig into these titles as we grapple with the impact of our devices on our daily lives.
We invite you to submit a review for future issues.
Volume 17, Issue 1 (Fall 2024 – submission deadline September 1, 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.
Volume 17, Issue 2 (Winter 2025 – submission deadline November 15, 2024) – Sharing Space: Animal/Human Relationships, a themed issue on the relationships between humans and animals as they share spaces in the world (e.g., protection of endangered animals, relationships with pets, human/animal dynamics). The editors welcome reviews of fiction and nonfiction 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 4 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-4/2/
WOW review: reading across cultures
ISSN 2577-0527