November is National Adoption Awareness Month in the U.S. and I have just read Allen Say‘s book, Allison (Houghton Mifflin, 1997), which is the heart-rendingly beautiful story of a little girl’s own sudden awareness of her adopted status and its consequences.

When little Allison’s grandmother sends her a kimono to wear, she suddenly realises that with her straight, dark hair, she looks more like her beloved Japanese doll Mei Mei than her (adoptive) parents. She wants to know where her Mommy and Daddy are, and why they didn’t want her. Despite her parents’ reassurances of their love for her, Allison comes close to rejecting them and her behavior reflects her inner turmoil. It takes a stray cat to help her get her life back into kilter and realise that she is part of a loving family which now numbers five, with Allison herself, her Mommy and Daddy, Mei Mei, and now also a no-longer-stray cat.

Allison’s hurt and anger are sensitively reflected in the illustrations through Say’s depiction of facial expressions and body-language. He doesn’t gloss over how hard it can be for parents to respond rationally either, and this adds to the story’s emotional depth. This is indeed a powerful and poignant book!

For other books about adoption, see these posts written last year by Aline and me; and do also read this thought-provoking post over at the Third Mom blog.

Take a look at – and listen to – this delightful e-card from Barefoot Books: author Amy Tan narrates the poem from the recently-published Motherbridge of Love. Once you’ve heard the poem and been given a glimpse of the lovely illustrations by Jose Masse, you’ll understand why this would be a perfect book to read as a bedtime story, especially but certainly not only if you have adopted children of your own. There’s a special story behind it too, since the author of the poem is unknown: but it highlights the questions an adopted child might have about where they come from and who they are. I was fortunate to be able to catch up with Xinran, founder of the Mothers’ Bridge of Love charity, to whom the poem was sent and to which the royalties for the book will go – you can read the interview here; and here’s a photo of Xinran with Amy Tan, taken when they met recently during Xinran’s whistle-stop tour of the States.

Another recently-published picture-book featuring adoption is Grace Lin’s gorgeous The Red Thread: An Adoption Fairy Tale. It has all the traits of an enduring fairy tale – and love as the overriding principle. It creatively incorporates the “ancient Chinese belief that an invisible, unbreakable thread connects all those who are destined to be together.” This is something that many adoptive parents of children from China become aware of during their sometimes long, emotional journey through the adoption process. Grace has indeed turned it into the stuff of fairytales. She talked about the book in her charming interview with 7-Imps back in May; and Just One More Book featured it a few weeks ago.

Both these books are valuable additions to the slowly increasing number of picture-books which focus on adoption; and each in its own way has those qualities which will keep them special for years to come.

For more books featuring adoption, check out Rose Kent’s great Personal View on the PaperTigers main website: “Three Cheers For Adoption Books – And Why We All Should Read ‘Em”, with her recommendations for children of all ages. Chicken Spaghetti has put together a list of books for National Adoption month, as has Andrea Ross in her revealing podcast Thicker than Water: True Family Ties for Swimming in Literary Soup.

…And don’t forget, the auction of Snowflakes for Robert’s Snow: For Cancer’s Cure is still going on – Auction 2 starts tomorrow! Grace Lin’s own snowflake is featured in the PaperTigers Gallery along with others by artists from around the Pacific Rim…

PaperTigers most recent (and last-of-the-year) issue celebrates National Adoption Month, ‘Children’s Books & Good Causes‘ and more. I encourage you to check out the new interviews, articles, reviews, gallery features, etc. And to expand on the issue’s focus, here are two more quality adoption-related books worth sharing at home or in the classroom: Joanna Catherine Scott’s The Lucky Gourd Shop, and Uma Krishnaswami’s Bringing Asha Home.

For more adoption-related posts, check here, here and here.

Characters who don’t quite fit in with their surroundings are often the stuff of good narrative tension and timeless stories – Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling comes to mind… Two beautiful picture books which seem to follow on along that theme, not least through the fact of their protagonists being white water birds (or not), are Borka: The Adventures of a Goose with no Feathers by John Burningham and Guji Guji by Chih-Yuan Chen.

Borka was republished recently in a special 40th anniversary edition. It has lost none of its appeal in the intervening years and the fabulous, witty artwork has not dated. Borka’s parents are told by the doctor goose that they must knit some feathers for Borka(!)– but the other young geese still laugh at her and she spends most of her time keeping out of the way. She can’t fly and isn’t even missed when all the other birds set off on their flight south for the winter. That’s when Borka’s adventures really begin; and the unexpected broadening of her horizons brings new friendships and happiness at last…

Meanwhile, our copy of Guji Guji was given to the whole family with the inscription “I hope you ALL enjoy this charming book” and indeed, there really is something in it for readers of all ages. Above all, there is a bubbly humor and an all-round, gleeful delight in the dénouement. Guji Guji started life as an egg which rolled into a duck’s nest. At this point we see a nest with three smallish white eggs and an ENORMOUS brown one. The next page:

Mother Duck didn’t notice.
(She was reading.)

Of course she was! What a glorious way for young readers / listeners to be introduced to reading as a way of life! Mother Duck treats all four of her children the same and Guji Guji has no questions even, until the “terrible” day three crocodiles arrive on the scene and assure him he’s one of them and should behave likewise. What follows is a story of temptation and wiliness overcome by love. For children who have always been fully secure in where they fit in to their families and communities, that is the straightforward unfolding of the tale: but for those who have felt out of place or exposed because they are physically different, perhaps through adoption, this is a very special story. Here’s a full review from Book Carousel; and Books for Kids has some ideas about how to use the story in class to talk about peer pressure. You can also listen to the story here, read by Scott Simon and Daniel Pinkwater on a National Public Radio broadcast, with interjections to highlight the delightful, so integral illustrations – it does just make you want to have the book open before you! I particularly loved this:

Here’s a picture I’d have on my wall and look at every day for the rest of my life and not mind it a bit, of Mother Duck reading to her little brood: they’re all in a big pile, falling asleep, sort of draped over Guji Guji.

How’s that for a blissful picture of a bedtime story?

As the genre of books on multicultural adoption grows in popularity, lists of such books, with sub-genres, are also proliferating. The Comeunity site offers book lists for kids and adults, along with other resources for adopting families. The AdoptShoppe site offers books specifically for kids from China, Korea, and Russia. Adopt Korea has a list for Korean adoptees. Adopt Vietnam has lists for fiction and non-fiction. Here’s another resource for kids’ multicultural adoption books and one of multiracial adoption books from PACT. Adoption counselor and author Betty J. Lifton writes on the subject, for children and for adults.d

At PaperTigers, check here for an interview with Xinran, author of Motherbridge of Love (MBL) , whose U.K. based charity has the goal of “reaching out to Chinese children in all corners of the world: those who have been raised abroad, those who have been adopted by Western families, and those living in China, often in destitute conditions”. And here for Rose Kent‘s article, “Three Cheers for Adoption Books and Why We Should All Read ‘Em.”

Multicultural adoptions have become so prevalent that an entire genre has emerged, for kids and parents alike. “One of the most frequent requests we have,” says Nicole Harvey of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, “is by adoptive parents of Asian kids looking for ways to orient their children to their birth culture.” She likes especially the complex and popular Cooper’s Lesson by Sun Ying Shin.

On our own PaperTigers, the genre is explored in a review of Three Names of Me and an interview with Cynthia Kadohata, Newbery award winner and an adoptive parent herself. Franki at A Year of Reading, also an adoptive parent, reviews Caroline Marsden’s When Heaven Fell. Scroll down for her interview with Rose Kent, author of Kimchi and Calamari, additionally reviewed and interviewed at PaperTigers. Cynthia Leitich Smith‘s blog Cynsations has a great list of books on multicultural adoption.

You don’t have to be an adoptee or adoptive parent to appreciate these books, of course. As our world becomes smaller and families more diverse, we all need inspiration and information from this vital field of children’s literature.