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 Letich 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.
One more for the list: Uma’s Krishnaswami’s BRINGING ASHA HOME. Beautiful book.
Thanks, Pooja, for reminding us of another excellent book in this genre. Here’s the PaperTigers review of Bringing Home Asha: http://www.papertigers.org/reviews/USA/papertigers/BringingAshaHome.html