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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.

For all families, spiritual books are an important way to transmit values to children. In multicultural families, the need is particularly complex. On our own PaperTigers site, you’ll find reviews of All the Way to Lhasa, Shiva’s Fire, Sky Sweeper, and even Ruth Nason’s series of books, prepared for the U.K.’s Religious Education school program, on visiting spiritual centers of various faiths. You can also search PaperTigers for books with spiritual content.

Out on the web, the Quakers’ website offers an annotated list of books emphasizing love, forgiveness and hope across cultures and religious traditions. Penguin Books publishes a list of mostly Christian and Jewish titles, plus one book on the Ramayana. Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has written several books for children emphasizing kindness and other spiritual values; he’s published by Parallax Press. Nicole Harvey of the Asian Art Museum, where many multicultural San Franciscans turn for materials, recommends several widely available titles: Kindness: A Treasury of Buddhist Wisdom for Children and Parents, Ayat Jamilah: Beautiful Signs: A Treasury of Islamic Wisdom for Children and Parents, and Daughters Of The Desert: Stories Of Remarkable Women From Christian, Jewish, And Muslim Traditions.

That’s just a start! We’ll return to this important topic again with more resources and further perspectives.