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.

Young Milly is the heroine in Julia Alvarez’s Finding Miracles, which was featured as our Tiger’s Choice last month. Born Milagros, and adopted by an American couple from an unnamed country in Latin America, Milly is in many ways a typical high school girl grappling with issues of identity. As Janet points out in her review of the book, “In her journey to learn how to be Milagros as well as Milly, this extraordinary young woman learns that family is an expandable concept.”

Whereas Milly’s tale isn’t “about adoption,” Julia Alvarez sensitively weaves in the theme around the book’s other topics—which makes it a very timely read for National Adoption Awareness Month, when we celebrate adoption as one of the special ways in which families are formed.

Adoption added complexity and depth to Milly’s journey of self-discovery, as it did to Joseph Calderaro’s personal quest in Rose Kent‘s Kimchi & Calamari, about a Korean teen who was adopted as a child by Italian-American parents. Whereas Finding Miracles and Kimchi & Calamari don’t deal exclusively with issues of adoption, by portraying well-rounded, well-adjusted adopted teens they emphasize the true, positive nature of adoption and help dispel the stereotypes that abound in literature and the media. For these and many others reasons, I highly recommend them.

Click here for ideas on how to celebrate and advocate for children who have yet to find a loving family to be a part of, and check out Marjorie’s The Ties of Love post for more book ideas and resources on the theme. You don’t need be a member of the adoption community to appreciate and enjoy this celebration!

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.