A few more adoption titles

Dear Aunt Debbie,

It's funny that you wrote about adoption-appropriate baby books on Wednesday -- that very morning, my friend Jonathan was talking about the search for a baby book for his adopted daughter.  There must be something in the air....

After guest blogging for us last week on Ethiopian children's books, my friend Jean checked in with the adoption listserves she's on, and has passed along a few more recommended titles:

Whoever You Are, by the excellent Mem Fox, is not directly an adoption book, but focuses on the ways in which all children share a common humanity: "Little one, whoever you are, wherever you are, there are little ones just like you all over the world.''  It's full of richly-colored pictures of children of all races and cultures, and the message seems similar to Fox's Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, one of our favorites.


God Found Us You, by Lisa Tawn Bergren, is directly about adoption -- in this case, a mother and baby fox -- and, as the title indicates, comes with a strong religious viewpoint.  The text is largely a conversation, with Little Fox asking Mama Fox to retell the story of "the day I came home."  In the comments I've found on the book, there's a split between adoptive parents who find the book's message loving and reassuring, and those who feel like it puts too much emphasis on how depressed the mother fox was before Little Fox came.


I Love You Like Crazy Cakes, by Rose Lewis, is the first-person story of a single mother who travels to China to adopt her daughter, and is based on Lewis's own experience.  It seems particularly applicable to families adopting internationally, and the illustrations are warm and loving (by Jane Dyer, who also illustrated Mem Fox's Time for Bed).



On the distinctly documentary-feeling side, there are the books When You Were Born in Vietnam,When You Were Born in China, and When You Were Born in Korea, each filled with cultural information and a lot of photographs of orphanages and adopting families.  A good resource for international Asian adoptions.

Finally, Jean pointed me to this blog, The Wayfarer, which has a list of books for both parents and children about adoption, specifically adoption from Ethiopia, and largely with a Christian focus.

I'm excited for Thanksgiving, and looking forward to seeing you then!

Love, Annie

P.S. Happy 500th blog post on Annie and Aunt!

Baby book, adoption-style

Dear Annie,

Thanks to your pal Jean for the Ethiopian books.  It's interesting how the folklore stories feel very similar to ones from European traditions.  Congratulations to Jean, Casey and family on their new arrival.

On occasion, adoptive families are faced with small reminders of their differences from birth families.  In the world of books, those reminders often show up in one of the staples of baby shower gifts: The Baby Memory Book.  They're those books that one always intends to go back and fill in the spaces one was too tired to write at the time: exact time of birth, weight, baby's first smile, baby's first solid food/steps/words/etc.  The first page often includes spaces for details of pregnancy ("Mommy's food cravings") and childbirth ("what Mommy was doing when she went into labor" etc.). 

Along with those books, I also carry
Our Chosen Child: How You Came To Us And The Growing Up Years by Judith Levy.  It's a fill-in-the-blanks book chronicling an adopted child from "Waiting for You" all the way up to "Teenage Years"  and "Looking Ahead."  It's got the how mom and dad met stuff, and the family tree (no mention of birth parents, but one can add lines fairly easily if one chooses).  Once the adoption's official, it keeps following the milestones in a child's life.  Like many books in this genre, it can get cloying fast:

We're two loving people,
Almost as happy as we could be.
We just needed a special angel,
To join our family tree.

And like some of the gay parent books we talked about, it doesn't make being adopted the point of the book.  The focus is the kid growing up, and the adoption is one of the details.

Love,

Deborah

Guest blogger: Ethiopian children's books

Dear Aunt Debbie,

I've often wondered whether the people who design the covers of many YA books ever actually read the books themselves.  The cross-legged stance of the girl on the cover of A Corner of White might keep me from picking it up, too.

I've written recently about our friends who are adopting a 1 1/2 year old girl from Ethiopia.  Jean, mom of Eleanor's friend Casey, who will be the big sister, is our guest blogger tonight.  When I asked her if she knew of any international adoption books she'd recommend, she said that instead, they've focused on books which will give Casey a clearer understanding of Ethiopian life (and a little bit of the Amharic language) before her sister arrives.  Here's Jean, with a summary of some of her favorites:

So here are the Ethiopian books I was telling you about.  Hope this is helpful for your blog!

Silly Mammo, retold by Gebregeorgis Yohannes

Silly Mammo is the story of the obedient, if not the most astute, young boy of Weizero (Mrs.) Terunesh.  When Weizero Terunesh finally decides Mammo needs to start helping with expenses, she sends him out to earn a living.  But while obedient and hard-working, Mammo never quite figures out how to bring his earnings back to his mother.  One mishap after another (e.g., carrying money in his hand, falling and dropping the money because he didn't know to put the money in his pocket - upon his mother's scolding that his earnings should be in his pocket, he goes out the next day, finds work and is paid with a bottle of milk . . . which he dutifully pours into his pocket . . . and the story continues with similar mishaps about how to get the earnings back to his mother).  Meanwhile, a beautiful, but mute girl, Tewabech, lives in a nearby town.  Her father heard that she would be cured if she could only laugh and offers her hand in marriage to any man that can make her laugh.  You can see where this is going.  As she sadly gazes out her window, she sees the obedient young Mammo carrying a donkey on his back - another failed attempt to follow the instruction of his mother, at which point she promptly breaks out into laughter.  Mammo is brought into their home and they fall in love.  It's a cute story and Casey enjoys all the silly antics of Mammo.  What's also neat is that it incorporates some Amharic words, so exposes Casey to a few additional words in another language (e.g., Ababa (dad), Weizero (Mrs.), eshi (ok))  Also, in  the version that we have also, the story is printed both in English and in the Amharic fidel (Amharic characters), so she becomes familiar with a different kind of script than the English letters.

A Saint and His Lion: The Story of Tekla of Ethiopia, retold by Elaine Murray Stone

A Saint and His Lion tells the story of Tekla, who at birth is determed to be destined for greatness, but ultimately suffers a crippling accident that affects his ability to walk.  While he is bed-ridden, he falls in love with scripture and dreams of becoming a priest.  Despite his disabilities, he attempts to find monks who will teach him to become a priest.  On his way to the monks, he discovers an injured lion and cares for the lion until he is healed.  Thereafter, he settles in with the monks and, upon mastering his biblical studies, he sets out to share the good news of Christ.  But as he is attempting to travel, he falls.   After many attempts, given his bad leg, he simply cannot stand back up.  But the same lion he once saved returns, carries him on his back to safety, and ultimately travels around with him.  Being able to enter villages on the back of the lion does wonders for spreading the word of Christ and opens people's minds to the faith.  Despite his set backs, his good heart and perseverance allows him to achieve the greatness he was destined for at his birth.  

Fire on the Mountain, by Jane Kurtz

Fire on the Mountain is the story of Alemayu, who is orphaned after his parents died.  He journeys to find his sister, who is working as a servant in a rich man's estate, where he is also able to find some work.  One day, the rich man brags how he is braver than others and can withstand the coldness of the air on the mountain.  Alemayu speaks up and says, matter-of-factly, that he too could withstand such coldness.  Offended that someone would seemingly challenge him, the rich man makes a deal with Alemayu.  If he can withstand one night with only a light shawl on the mountain, he would give him money and four cows, so he would no longer have to work as a servant.  But if he loses, he and his sister would have to leave the estate, never again permitted to work there.  Alemayu accepts the challenge and passes the evening shivering on the mountain, listening to the hyenas in the distance.  When Alemayu returns the following morning, cold but alive, the rich man asks how he did it.  Alemayu responds that he survived by staring at a  fire of a shepherd on a distant mountain, and pretending that the fire was also warming him.  Based on this, the rich man claims that Alemayu lost the bet, on the theory that staring at a distant fire was the same as making a fire.  The rich man intends to prepare a great feast to celebrate his having won the bet.  He tells Alemayu that he and his sister can stay this one night, but they will have to leave the next morning and never come back.  The other servants are appalled at how devious and unfair the rich man acted.  But they spend all day preparing injera and Ethiopian stews for the feast, which fills the estate with the incredible smells of the food for the occassion.  After the rich man arrives, he sits down and waits, but no food is served.  He demands music, and the musician moves her fingers, but no sound emerges.  When he demands to know what is going on, they explain that smelling the food is the same as eating it; pretending to play an instrument is the same as enjoying its sounds.  The next day, the rich man gives Alemayu his cows and money he owes him.

Ethiopian Voices: Tsion's Life, by Stacy Bellward

Tsion's Life is not so much a story, as a detailed account of a day in the life of a young girl in Ethiopia.  It provides examples of customs, ordinary daily activities, and cultural examples of Ethiopian life, while teaching some Amharic words in the process.  For example, it tells you how to say palace in Amharic (bet mengest), and then tells of various Ethiopian palaces, like the Lalibela, where eleven churches are carved out of a stone mountain and connected by tunnels. Or it tells how to say mother in Amharic ("enat") and then proceeds to talk about Tsion's mother and what she does for a living in Ethiopia.  It's a good book to use to teach kids about the similarities and differences between Ethiopian and American cultures and experiences.

One other book I thought of, which isn't an international adoption book, but is adoption related, is Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born. It's written by Jamie Lee Curtis, and is a cute story about a young girl asking her parents to tell them about the night she was born, how they received a call that her birth mother was in labor, how they frantically boarded the flight, how perfect she was when they saw her, etc.  I think its a pretty popular book for families who find each other through domestic adoption.

All the best,

Jean

And love from me,

Annie

More adoption books

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Your list of books about adoption is a great place to start.  I've done a little poking around through online lists, and have found a few more that look like they might be good.  Caveat: I haven't read any of these, and as Message Books, I'm afraid that some of them in full-text version may be unreadably cheesy.  That being said, here are three that look worth checking out:

I Don't Have Your Eyes, by Carrie A. Kitze.  On each page, the text notes a physical difference between parent and child, followed by a similarity in personality or behavior:

I don't have your eyes...
...but I have your way of looking at things.

I don't have your toes...
...but I have your way of dancing through life.

It's not the story of one white parent and Asian adopted child, as the cover might imply; each illustration depicts a different family, so a variety of races and possible family situations are covered.

Taking interracial adoption into the animal world, there's Keiko Kasza's A Mother for Choco, which follows a little fat-cheeked yellow bird on his journey to find a mother.  He starts out by looking for animals who have physical similarities to him: the giraffe is yellow, but has no wings; the penguin has wings, but no big round cheeks; he is rebuffed by both.  Then he finds Mrs. Bear, who takes him in with the question, "If you had a mommy, what would she do?"  The story ends with Choco joining a family which  clearly contains some other adopted animals: a pig, a hippo, and an alligator Mrs. Bear has already taken in.  Aside from being a little concerned about the welfare of a bird in the company of a bear and an alligator, this one sounds sweet.


Emma's Yucky Brother, by Jean Little, sounds like it might be an interesting choice for Eleanor's friend, whose family is adopting a toddler this spring.  It's an I Can Read book, aimed at early elementary school age kids, and tells the story of Emma welcoming her new adopted brother, Max.  Max is four years old, and though Emma is tremendously excited to have him join the family, his entry is a little rough.  While the reviews I've read of this one sound good, I'm a little wary of it being the kind of book which raises problems that might not come up on their own.  Worth a look, though.

Love, Annie