There are very few books on adoption or fostering in Jewish kidlt. This list is an ongoing list (hopefully) that I will continue to update, and a topic that comes up often in my family. It’s shockingly small so I’m hoping that I’ve left off many titles. This is definitely something that we should be talking about more and I’m going to put it on my list of topics to hopefully explore one day.
- Rebecca’s Journey Home by Brynn Olenberg Sugarman (PB)
- The Length of a String by Elissa Brent Weissman (MG)
In looking at adoption in kidlit generally, it needs to acknowledged that adoption is such a complex thing. There’s so much loss and sadness that is inevitably part of it. There’s abuse, prejudice, and inequity that’s part of it sometimes too. Writing about adoption without acknowledging some of the complexities would be difficult for me to do.
There are also so many books, very good ones too, that use animals in place of humans. This is something that I would like to see change too. It’s easy to see why animals work well in children’s stories: they’re cute and entertaining, they avoid having to talk about race or gender, and they’re impossible to offend. Even so, keeping with the trend in children’s publishing of allowing children to see themselves in books, I think that we need to see more of these books with actual human kids in them. I know that my children and I would like to.