Author Guidelines

WOW extends a call for critical reviews of children’s and adolescent global literature to be published in WOW Review: Reading Across Cultures, an electronic journal of Worlds of Words. Generally, WOW Review issues focus on a theme, though some issues are unthemed. Future issue themes and deadlines are listed at the end of the page. The criteria for reviews include:

• Books published throughout the world, including the U.S., that represent life within a specific cultural group, especially as related to the global community. Editors look for children’s or young adult books published within the last three years.
• The review lists the complete bibliographic information for the book: full title, author(s), illustrator(s), translator(s) if applicable, publisher, publication date, number of pages, ISBN13.
• The review begins with a careful summary of the content or story, including both text and illustrations. Issues of culture that relate to the content should be highlighted using a broad definition of culture, including ethnicity, language, gender, geographical areas, age, socio-economics, historical eras, physically/mentally challenged individuals, religion, etc.
• Consider excellence in text and illustrations. This includes evaluating genre fit, cultural authenticity and thematic relevance.
• Citation of sources used to evaluate authenticity, such as personal communication with individuals from a particular cultural group, perspectives from media sources, personal insights, author’s notes and research citations.
• Background information about the author and illustrator should be included.
• List other relevant texts that might extend thinking about a particular cultural group, life experience, or theme. Include other information that might be useful to educators such as the audience that might find this book most compelling if that is significant (e.g. young children or teens). Note, however, that we do not age level books (e.g., ages 3-5) since many books go across multiple age levels based on the purpose for sharing the book and the life experiences of readers. Instead describe the book in enough depth and with information on the main character so that readers of the review can make their own decisions about audience.

Evaluating cultural authenticity is complex and includes issues of accuracy, cultural values, and diverse lifestyles and perspectives within a cultural group as represented in text and illustration. Criteria for exploring cultural authenticity can assist reviewers in this process.

The reviews should be written in APA format and be 800 words minimum in length including the bibliographic and author information. Please be sure to double and triple check spelling of author names, book titles, publisher names, etc. Refer to current and past issues for specific formatting. Further guidance on determining cultural authenticity can be found in the introduction to the inaugural issue of WOW Review: Reading Across Cultures.

AI Statement: Author/s take full responsibility for literature reviews and data, analyses of collected information, and interpretations in this submission, regardless of the tools used. Author/s confirm that AI tools did not replace their judgement in findings. Author/s affirm that the work meets WOW Review’s standards for research and practice integrity.