Search Results for: blog adoption books with great art the tummy mummy1

Adoption Books with Great Art: You Are Special, You Were Chosen

You Are Special; You Were Chosen is a sweet little book which grew out of the bedtime story that the author’s father read to her each night. Its soft, detailed colored pencil/pastel illustrations definitely qualify it for my Adoption Books with Great Art series. The lovely pictures show diverse children and families, including siblings of different races, which I really appreciate, as that is something I have a hard time finding. Books featuring a multiracial classroom are becoming common, as are books featuring families of color—but multiracial families are still difficult to find. I almost bought a book the other … Continue reading →

Book Review: a Family for Jamie

Suzanne Bloom’s A Family for Jamie: An Adoption Story is a bit unique in that it talks not only about the child’s story, but about the waiting parents-to-be–their emotions, their preparations, their long waiting and dreaming. Softly colored illustrations—also done by Bloom—convey the warm yet wishful mood very well. The illustrations are also fun to go back to—many details can be found on a second or third look. For example, the expression on a rag doll’s face is lonely as she waits for a child to play with. Other scenes show children playing together with a few comical details, such … Continue reading →

Adoption Books with Great Art: Megan’s Birthday Tree

Another entry in our Adoption Books with Great Art series is remarkable not only because of its luminous paintings, but because it is one of the rare books that describe an open adoption so naturally. In Megan’s Birthday Tree, the narrator tells us that she sometimes wonders about her adoption, but “I don’t have to go far to find the answers to my questions. Mom and Dad tell me what I want to know. And since I have an open adoption, I stay in touch with my birth mother, Kendra, too. Although I don’t see her often, we mail each … Continue reading →

Book Review: Tell Me a Real Adoption Story!

Tell Me a Real Adoption Story! by Betty Jean Lifton, herself an adoptee, psychologist and adoption counselor, is written from the perspective of a child. A child promises to go to bed if his mother tells him an adoption story. The frazzled mother tries a story about a fisherman finding an abandoned baby, but the child will have none of it. She then tells a story about a king and queen who long for a child and find one in an orange grove. The child presses to know where the baby came from. The mother says she doesn’t know, but … Continue reading →

Book Review: Did My First Mother Love Me?

Posted on by

We don’t have enough books about the birthmother’s perspective on adoption (The Tummy Mummy and The Mulberry Bird being happy exceptions). Fortunately, one birthmother has written a book for her child to read if she ever asks whether her first mother loved her. Kathryn Ann Miller has fortunately chosen to share her response with all of us, realizing that not all of us will have access to our children’s birthparents and that not all birthparents will be able to articulate their feelings. Miller’s book: Did My First Mother Love Me? –A Story for an Adopted Child opens with a girl … Continue reading →

Adoption Books with Great Art Series: I Love You Like Crazy Cakes

I Love You Like Crazy Cakes, written by Rose Lewis about her own adoption story, is illustrated by gorgeous watercolors by Jane Dyer. Like the other books she has illustrated, Dyer’s watercolors are realistic, evoke emotion, and are simply beautiful. The story is focused on a mother adopting a baby girl from a Chinese orphanage. It is appropriate for single mothers, but there is no reason it couldn’t be used by a two-parent family. The narrative is straightforward. There are baby girls in an orphanage with nannies to take good care of them, but no mother. There is a mother … Continue reading →

Reading and Thinking about Birthmothers

Reviewing all these adoption books has got me wondering. I’ve always read adoption books to the kids, but not ones that focus on birthmothers as much as the ones I’ve been reading lately. Over and over I read interviews with adopted teens and adults saying that they were curious about their birthparents and longed to talk about them, but their adoptive parents didn’t seem open and/or the kids feared hurting the adopted parents’ feelings. Social workers now seem to counsel parents to speak openly about birthparents. Recently a spate of books dealing with birthparents have been published, such as Mommy … Continue reading →