Search Results for: blog kids books on domestic adoption and general adoption themes

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 →

Book Review: The Mulberry Bird

The classic adoption book The Mulberry Bird, by Anne Braff Brodzinsky, seems to be one of those books that people either love or hate. I suspect that it all depends on the timing, which in turn depends on your child. Most people say their child loved it and seemed to find it reassuring. A couple of parents are sure it caused more trouble than it averted. I shared this ambivalence. I checked this book out of the library a couple of years ago and returned it without sharing it with my kids. This time, I put it on the shelf … Continue reading →

Book Review: Is That Your SISTER? A True Story of Adoption

So, how do the kids really feel? Is That Your Sister? tells you. It is narrated by six-year-old Catherine, who co-wrote the book with her mother, Sherry. At the playground and the store, Catherine is often asked, “Is that your sister? Is that your mother?” Catherine, her mother and her sister all look quite different from each other because Catherine and her sister are adopted. (In the black-and-white pencil illustrations by Sheila Kelly Welch, Catherine appears to be biracial, fairly light-skinned with textured hair and some African-appearing features, and Carla is African-American with dark skin and a short Afro.) Catherine … Continue reading →

Ten Things I’m Thankful For about Adoption Today

1. Those birthmothers who choose life in the face of pressure to do otherwise. In many cases this is a brave, brave action. If my daughter ever asks if her birthmother loved her, I can answer in the affirmative—because otherwise she wouldn’t be here. 2. The birth family members who provide honest medical and social history for their children. This helps us give them better medical and developmental care, reassures them that they have a history like everyone else, and frees the mind from wondering too much about their past and lets it go on to other things. 3. The … Continue reading →

Mixed Media Messages about Adoption Issues

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had this creeping feeling of uneasiness in the middle of a children’s book or movie, even if it is not supposed to be about adoption issues, because so many movies do have themes related to adoption. Movies and books that are actually about adoption I can prepare for. The others take me by surprise. It is amazing how many books and films deal with losing a parent, probably because that idea touches something deep in practically everyone. I want to stay alert to loss and grief issues in little children’s movies like … Continue reading →

Resources for Talking About Skin Color

In recent blogs I have talked about my reaction when my four-year-old daughter said she didn’t like her skin; she wanted my skin. (She is Korean and has light tan/beige skin, I am Euro-American and very pale with pink undertones.) The first thing that came into my mind was a segment on the Sesame Street video “The Best of Elmo”. (Note: this is different from the “Best of Elmo’s World” videos.) One segment guest-stars Whoopi Goldberg. Elmo tells Whoopi that he likes her skin, and then says he wishes he could trade his red fur for Whoopi’s skin and hair. … Continue reading →

Media Review: Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies (Reading Rainbow Video)

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You may be familiar with the PBS series Reading Rainbow. Each episode reads one children’s book in its entirety, and has young viewers review several other related books. However, each episode goes beyond the books to delve deeper into their topic through interviews with real people. In this Reading Rainbow episode on adoption (available on VHS from Amazon by clicking here or at many libraries), the topic is expanded to have many child and “person on the street’ interviewees say what “family” means to them, and the rewarding and sometimes frustrating things about being in a family. “Let me tell … Continue reading →

Book Review: The Orphan Train Children: Will’s Choice

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The Orphan Train Children series, a spin-off of the Orphan Train Adventures Series, tells the story of children who were sent West on “orphan trains” to be fostered by townspeople. The children in this series are fictional; the orphan trains themselves are not. In Will’s Choice, twelve-year-old Will, whose mother died when he was four, travels with his father who works in a circus. When Will shows no signs of being talented enough to earn a living with the circus (okay, he’s rather clumsy), his father tells him that he has arranged for him to go “on a grand adventure”—to … Continue reading →

Book Review: The Orphan Train Children Series, Part One

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There are two new book series by prolific children’s author Joan Lowery Nixon. Two of the seven books in the Orphan Train Adventures series have won major awards. A spin-off series, Orphan Train Children, is a series of small books telling the individual stories of fictional children on the train. My first reaction upon seeing this series was, “oh, no”. A children’s book about abandoned children being put on a train, stood on platforms for townspeople to choose from, then being used for farm labor? Sure non-adopted kids might find this bit of history new and unusual, but won’t it … Continue reading →

The Gift from Afar

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Prepare for a literary information dump. During my recent illness I wasn’t able to write clearly, but I did a lot of reading to distract myself—so you’ll be seeing a lot of book reviews in the next week or two. The Gift from Afar is an adoption fairy tale written by a Korean-American mother. She writes in the introduction that all children love the story of how they came to be, but notes that often adopted children don’t have stories of their birth. She uses the old folk theme of storks delivering babies to weave a story of a special … Continue reading →