Another adoption-related book that was recommended by Amazon reviewers is "Over the Moon: An Adoption Tale." Like "A Quilt of Wishes," this story and its illustrations were inspired by the adoption experience of its author (and illustrator!) Karen Katz. In this case, the adoption took place in Guatemala, although the country isn’t mentioned by name.
"Once upon a time," the story begins, "a teeny-tiny baby was born." The infant beams, cradled upon the softest cloud in the middle of a golden meadow. Fireworks burst around her organically, as if all of nature is celebrating her arrival.
As you might guess from this opening, "Over the Moon" is more a fairytale than a factual account of the adoption process: the child is appears as if by magic; the parents pick her up and take her home. There are no complications or delays, nobody ever frowns, and the skies are not cloudy all day. Life is very simple and very grand. (Because of this simplicity, the story would be accessible even to very young children.)
I enjoyed the text's lyrical moments ("you grew like a flower in another lady’s tummy"), but for me, it is the illustrations that really make the story. Every page overflows with beautiful, bright colors, curves, interesting shapes and visual textures, playfully dancing images, and a sense of perspective that may owe something to medieval art (size represents not distance but importance in the story – "extras" are small, named characters are medium, and our protagonists are enormous) . The pictures are a lot of fun (and would make fun folk-style appliqué quilts).
The images do more than just accompany the text: they help us to see the parents’ joy more eloquently than any words could. On the pages where the radiant parents learn their child has been born, for instance, the mother leaps into her husband’s arms. They quite literally are floating - off the ground and over the moon! Although the artistic style is quite different, I was reminded of the way happiness lifts Chagall's lovers off their feet (cf. Romeo and Juliet or Lovers with Flowers). Here too, it seems, joy is a natural law that more than exceeds the puny laws of physics.
In these pictures, Katz, quite simply, has captured the essence of joy.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Twenty quilts
A selection of twenty quilts from amongst those I've made (or started) over the last few years
Friday, January 26, 2007
Personalize your fictional family!
DH suggests, given people's tendency to gravitate towards the familiar, that there might be a market for popular picture books with parental permutations. Just sketch in (or erase) a parent in the background, do a global search-and-replace on some pronouns, and the book appeals to a whole new audience!
You could imagine extending this so that potential buyers could go through a checklist to select the parent's/parents' genders, races, statures (endomorph vs. ectomorph), features, etc., and really come out with something completely personalized.
Do you think it'd sell? ;)
You could imagine extending this so that potential buyers could go through a checklist to select the parent's/parents' genders, races, statures (endomorph vs. ectomorph), features, etc., and really come out with something completely personalized.
Do you think it'd sell? ;)
Families just like yours
Sandie and I have both been looking through adoption-related books online lately. At Amazon, primarily. Amazon has more reviews than any other online bookstore I’ve seen. Many of the reviews are really insightful, and there have been several occasions where they have inspired me to revise my shopping list.
Sometimes, though, reviewers’ concerns or issues color their comments so much that these reviews become virtually useless for others.
One of the issues for some of the adoption book reviewers seems to be the composition of adoptive families. I found reviews from single mothers who, instead of evaluating a book on its merits, stated that they had simply chosen not to purchase this book because the family portrayed included a father. Likewise, I saw reviews from adoptive two-parent families dismissing other books simply because no father was depicted.
I found myself somewhat puzzled. Things like an interesting, well-written story and engaging illustrations are my top priorities for a picture book – and these are the things that I, like most readers, hope to learn about in a book review. A comparison of the fictional family and the family of some stranger on the internet just isn’t all that helpful or relevant to me.
Now, I do understand the impulse to give your child books and things that speak directly to her situation. When I visited American Girl Place last year, I was fascinated with Jess, the 2006 American Girl doll of the year, because she was half Japanese (like my own hypothetical children would be). Even though I don’t have a daughter (or even the prospect of one on the horizon), I still considered digging deep into my wallet to purchase the doll. (How often do you find a mixed race doll, anyway?) It’s important for children to see that there are interesting, worthwhile people (fictional or non-) who look like they do, act like they do, have experiences like theirs, or are similar in some other respect.
As a child, I enjoyed books like that - books where I felt like could relate to the characters. Periodically I came across a character who maintained her self-esteem even while displaying a terrible shock of ginger hair; or one who prospered even though she shared some very familiar weaknesses. It was comforting to feel that, even if I was flawed, at least I wasn’t uniquely flawed. ;)
But the characters in my beloved books didn’t have to be my Doppelgängers for me to relate to them. Even when I was very young, I, like any child, was able to make the imaginative leap between myself and the strong-willed badger heroine of Bread and Jam for Frances
, between my concerns and those of the humble little pig in Charlotte's Web
; I didn’t need to sprout a striped pelt or grow a snuffly snout to see myself in them. I loved the pioneer stories like the Little House on the Prairie
series and Caddie Woodlawn
, and I adored learning about Jewish life in turn-of-the-century New York through the sisters of All-of-a-kind Family
, even though my own life was very different.
It was wonderful to be able to visit these fictional (or semi-fictional) worlds, so different from my own, and yet so similar. How many things I learned, and how many questions followed, with so many new experiences to process. I would not have learned so much if the protagonists had been just like me.
Details of self, family, community, faith, may differ in any given book, but our human concerns, deep down, remain the same: Who am I? Where do I fit in my family and my community? Am I loved? Is there some higher or deeper meaning to my life? Will the world be a better place because I was here? It is this common humanity, the things that make us human, that bring us together.
I think there would be room in my adoptive child's library for stories that reflect her specific experiences, for stories that speak to her on a more universal level, and for stories that do a little of both. She'd miss out on so much otherwise.
Sometimes, though, reviewers’ concerns or issues color their comments so much that these reviews become virtually useless for others.
One of the issues for some of the adoption book reviewers seems to be the composition of adoptive families. I found reviews from single mothers who, instead of evaluating a book on its merits, stated that they had simply chosen not to purchase this book because the family portrayed included a father. Likewise, I saw reviews from adoptive two-parent families dismissing other books simply because no father was depicted.
I found myself somewhat puzzled. Things like an interesting, well-written story and engaging illustrations are my top priorities for a picture book – and these are the things that I, like most readers, hope to learn about in a book review. A comparison of the fictional family and the family of some stranger on the internet just isn’t all that helpful or relevant to me.
Now, I do understand the impulse to give your child books and things that speak directly to her situation. When I visited American Girl Place last year, I was fascinated with Jess, the 2006 American Girl doll of the year, because she was half Japanese (like my own hypothetical children would be). Even though I don’t have a daughter (or even the prospect of one on the horizon), I still considered digging deep into my wallet to purchase the doll. (How often do you find a mixed race doll, anyway?) It’s important for children to see that there are interesting, worthwhile people (fictional or non-) who look like they do, act like they do, have experiences like theirs, or are similar in some other respect.
As a child, I enjoyed books like that - books where I felt like could relate to the characters. Periodically I came across a character who maintained her self-esteem even while displaying a terrible shock of ginger hair; or one who prospered even though she shared some very familiar weaknesses. It was comforting to feel that, even if I was flawed, at least I wasn’t uniquely flawed. ;)
But the characters in my beloved books didn’t have to be my Doppelgängers for me to relate to them. Even when I was very young, I, like any child, was able to make the imaginative leap between myself and the strong-willed badger heroine of Bread and Jam for Frances
, between my concerns and those of the humble little pig in Charlotte's Web; I didn’t need to sprout a striped pelt or grow a snuffly snout to see myself in them. I loved the pioneer stories like the Little House on the Prairie series and Caddie Woodlawn, and I adored learning about Jewish life in turn-of-the-century New York through the sisters of All-of-a-kind Family, even though my own life was very different.It was wonderful to be able to visit these fictional (or semi-fictional) worlds, so different from my own, and yet so similar. How many things I learned, and how many questions followed, with so many new experiences to process. I would not have learned so much if the protagonists had been just like me.
Details of self, family, community, faith, may differ in any given book, but our human concerns, deep down, remain the same: Who am I? Where do I fit in my family and my community? Am I loved? Is there some higher or deeper meaning to my life? Will the world be a better place because I was here? It is this common humanity, the things that make us human, that bring us together.
I think there would be room in my adoptive child's library for stories that reflect her specific experiences, for stories that speak to her on a more universal level, and for stories that do a little of both. She'd miss out on so much otherwise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)