Search Results for: blog book review talking with young children about adoption

Book Review: All About Adoption:How Families Are Made and How Kids Feel About It

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All About Adoption: How Families Are Made and How Kids Feel About It is a book from Magination Press, which specializes in titles helping children understand tough situations or deal with feelings. (Magination Press is also the publisher of Maybe Days, a Book about Foster Care.) All About Adoption authors Marc Nemiroff and Jane Annunziata are both clinical psychologists specializing in families and children. All About Adoption starts out by saying “there are lots of different ways to have a baby. ..some parents have one baby..and some parents have two or three babies all at once. “Babies grow inside a … Continue reading →

Books for Kids About Foster Care

There are many good children’s books about adoption, but still a dearth of books about foster care. It is a painful subject to write about, but it is also hard when a foster child thinks he or she is the only one going through it, and also when other children don’t understand. The following books can be used by foster parents, social workers and therapists to help children understand some of the reasons they might be in foster care, the roles of the adults including biological family, foster parents, social worker, therapist and judge; and who makes the decisions about … Continue reading →

Book Review: Families Are Different

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My last blog reviewed two books on families which showcase the diversity of families in gorgeous photographs of families, both doing everyday things and celebrating special events. Families Are Different was written and illustrated by Nina Pelligrini, a mother of two adopted daughters who said this book was inspired by feelings expressed by one of her daughters. The book’s characters are two daughters from Korea and their two white parents. With its simply-drawn illustrations and its matter-of-fact narration by one of children, the book is well-suited to younger children but makes a point that will be appreciated by older children … Continue reading →

Book Reviews: Books on Families

Two general books about families include adoptive, multi-racial and special-needs families that will be of interest to adoptive families. The photos in both will appeal to young children and the text will spark discussion for older children and their parents. Photographer Ann Morris ‘ trademark style is books with one theme, such as “Work”, “Hats”, “Carrying Babies”, and show pictures of people all around the world doing these things. The text is kept simple and the photos speak for themselves, although an index in the back provides a caption for each picture explaining what country it was taken in and … Continue reading →

Can We Emphasize Culture Too Much?

The latest issue of Adoptive Families’ magazine has an article by Mei-Ling Hopgood. She writes from the perspective of an adult adoptee, having been adopted from Taiwan in the 1970s and raised in the U.S. by white parents, together with her two brothers adopted from Korea. I’ve written before about the discomfort I sometimes feel regarding how much to emphasize my daughters’ birth culture. Many young adult adoptees are now speaking out and saying that they either thought of themselves as “white” or desperately wanted to be, that they had a tremendous shock in high school or college when others … Continue reading →

When a Child Makes a Racist Taunt To Another Child

No matter how much we read about adoption, there is a tremendous tendency to believe that your own kids are not getting questions or comments about race or adoption. The last few blogs have talked about helping to avoid stereotypes in children by having diverse books, dolls, and posters in their environment, and by specific actions and discussions to help kids develop empathy and learn about the contributions people of various races have made and are making to our society. Now I will mention some suggestions for a time when a child actually says or hears a racist comment or … Continue reading →

Activities Fostering an Appreciation of Other Cultures in Elementary and Middle-school Students

My last blog discussed activity ideas for helping young children become comfortable with racial diversity. Here are some ideas for teachers of elementary and middle school students: –Make sure they know the science of skin color. A good book is All the Colors We Are: The story of How We Get Our Skin Color. This is a bilingual (English/Spanish) book with photographs and simple explanations. –I like to follow or precede a discussion of the science of skin color with an artistic or aesthetic look at the beauty of different skin colors. I like All the Colors of the Earth, … Continue reading →

Book Review: Love, Adoption, and Brownies with Sprinkles

Sometimes a book comes along that manages to write about a single experience, but one that is so ubiquitous that we think, “Why didn’t anyone write a book like this before?” Star of the Week: a Story of Love, Adoption, and Brownies with Sprinkles is based on the authors’ own daughter. She has some unique circumstances not shared by her classmates, but the setting is one almost all kids in early school-age can relate to. I n preschool, kindergarten and early elementary school, a frequent occurrence is for each student to be assigned a week to be the “Star”. They … Continue reading →

Being Adopted at School

As children settle into the new school year this week, some will encounter curiosity from classmates. Younger children may be asked, “is that your real mom and dad?” If they are from a non-diverse area, they may have comments about skin color or physical features. Older children may have teachers ask if their parents speak English. One middle-schooler found that her teachers’ attitude toward her changed when they met her white mother. The teachers had assumed that the girl was an illegal alien and that they wouldn’t be able to communicate with her parents. One of our blogger’s wrote about … Continue reading →

Book Review: a Koala for Katie

A Mother for Choco and A Koala for Katie are both books emphasizing that, while it is sad that first parents sometimes cannot care for children, the children can be happy with other parents. Parenting is a matter of how one cares for the child, not whether a parent looks like the child or is the child’s first parent. While A Mother for Choco talks about a child searching for a mother nad whether a mother has to look like her child, A Koala for Katie is about a girl who processes her own adoption story “adopting” a stuffed animal, … Continue reading →