Last year, I wrote about my favorite books I reviewed in 2008. Here are favorites from the children’s adoption books I’ve reviewed this year.
(These are books which I’ve reviewed here in the Adoption Blog in 2009. They may have been published in prior years.)
In My Heart, by Molly Bang, is a wonderful book for any child. It’s a story of her mother telling her child that throughout the various activities of their separate days, he is always in her heart—and his parents, friends and teachers are in his heart too. The child pictured looks Indian or Latino and has Caucasian parents.
Star of the Week: A Story of Love, Adoption, and Brownies with Sprinkles is a story written by an adoptive mother about a common experience of adoptive families—wondering whether the “Star of the Week” activity in early elementary school (requiring the child to bring baby pictures and tell about their lives) will bring questions from their classmates about adoption.
The White Swan Express tells about a diverse group of adoptive-parents who travel to China to meet their baby girls. China ranks first in number of children adopted to the U.S. this past year. This book will be an accurate reflection of the adoption story of many of these 3,000 girls.
Found, by prolific children’s writer Margaret Haddix, has caused controversy in the adoption community. The storyline is adopted children learning that they were famous children in history “rescued” by time travelers and accidentally landed in 21st-century America, where they were adopted into U.S. homes until the time travelers could return for them 13 years later. I expected that this wasn’t the sort of book I’d care for, and many adoptive parents were afraid of the storyline feeding into adoptive children’s fantasies about being kidnapped. I would have viewed a realistic fiction book about an adopted child discovering he’d been taken from his birthparents extremely negatively.
But for me, the time travel element, and the idea of royal children of the past being rescued from their recorded deaths in war or pestilence, made the plot completely fantasy fiction. (After all, if your kid really believes he’s King Edward the Fourth, you’ve got issues more pressing than adoption to worry about.) The positives I see in it are the good relationships modeled by Jonah and his adoptive parents and sister, and the modeling of positive adoption language and concepts. I think these elements are respectful of adoption and will be good education for non-adopted kids.
I do think this book is for middle-school kids and older.
Please see these related blogs:
My Favorite Adoption Storybooks of 2008
My Top Nonfiction Adoption Books Reviewed in 2008