Problematic Tropes: Adoption

Quick Things You Need To Know:

There are so many freaking terrible books about adoption. Here re some of them.

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Quick & Messy Book List:

White Savior Complex & Parent-centered.

• Happy adoption day – mccutcheon – transracial White savior. Orientalism. Mild Asian slant eyes, but not as bad as Nancy carlson’s. Narrated and centered on white parents. “For out of a world so tattered and torn, You came to our house that wonderful morn.” Wonderful for who? WOW, insensitive.  disposable children.
  • Sweet Moon Baby – karen henry clark – see many white savior criticisms in the 3-5 star ratings on Amazon
• My family is forever – Carlson – Can we talk about how Nancy’s Lack of intersectionality really pains me when I like her other books? transracial adoption white saviors. Suuuper bad orientalism slant eyes. When the white people smile they get slit eyes but not once does this girl open her eyes. She looks like a wierd alien, which whatever, Carlson is a shitty artist anyway and her people are blehhh putty monsters. Even though this one is narrated by the girl, the story STILL centers on her parents – their POV before adoption and none of her own or her family of origin. 6 pages of her family’s pre adoption narrative before she joins the family. “My mom and dad really wanted a child to love, and they looked forward to the day thy would become parents. So they asked an adoption counselor to help them find a child. They had to wait and wait.” (This last sentence irks me the most – their feeelings!!!) “ but they were so excited about me that they found lots of ways to keep busy. Then one day they got a call. It was time to go meet me!” The only pre adoption story she gets is “once I told Jeffrey I flew to my parents on a spaceship, just like a superhero.” Way to sanitize trauma for easy consumption. gross. Later, at least she wonders about her first family “sometimes I wonder about my birth parents. Does my birth mother’s hair stick up like mine? Is my birth father a good reader like me? One thing I know for sure is that they wanted me to have a family to love — and I sure do!” Except no… in many cases these first parents wanted to keep her. It’s like giving permission for international kidnapping and trauma and victimization, so long as these children are adopted by nice white people. The book is dedicated to parents. Yay saviors!
• Hattie Peck – levey – bird is obsessed with eggs. i think her obsession with eggs makes this not ideal for an adoption book. she DOES go all over the world for them, but not because she wants to be a mom and she wants THIS special egg, but because she has an egg fetish, and putting this into an adoption list feels off. I don’t like it when my mom talks about how much she wanted to be a mom and how much she wanted an adorable asian daughter. I would much rather she talks about how much she wanted ME as like, a human. puts too much stress on the adoptive parents as saviors and heroes and children as abandoned vicims.
• Hattie Peck: The Journey home – levey – liked this one more than the prequel, since the last one she was obsessed with eggs, and this one focuses more on the love of her babies. could work for parents letting go of kids when they are ready to leave the nest.  but like the other, this one still focuses on the mom, not the kids, and we’re reading books for kids, not parents. feels masturbatory for foster and adoptive parents. letting go, foster
• mother bruce – this TERRIBLE for adoption, bruce really doesn’t want to be a parent, but the illustrations are hilarious and Q loved it at 4yo, father not by choice, hard work of parenting, but problematic for subtle messages of adoptive children as burdens
• God found us you- Bryant – skip. Sappy and problematic for the idea that God would WANT you to lose your first family.
• Jin woo – bunting – white boy and his parents preparing for arrival of new asian adopted brother. one reviewer points out how parents treat kids like posessions, accurate. note jin woo the real kid chimes in on the reviews which is adorable.

Happy ending fairytale narrative (everything is solved by adoption)

• King & King & Family – de haan – oh holy shit no. sequel, the kings go on a honeymoon to the jungle. starts out fine, although the illustrations are cluttered to the point of confusion. they see all the animals have babies, boring jungle shit happens like crossing bridges and row boating, odd book on navigating the jungle that teaches you nothing about the jungle. then they suddenly wish they had a baby of their own. pack up and come home, and out bursts an brown child (all the main characters are super white). “All at once the suitcase burst open. “Oh my, it’s a little girl from the jungle!” said the queen.” “You’re the child we always wanted,” said King and King.” ARE YOU SHITTING ME. they accidentally brought home a child and decide to keep her as a souvenir? where the fuck did she come from? they officially adopt (kidnap!) her, no questions askde, and she becomes princess daisy. authors are white women. officially the worst gay dad book ever.
• speranza’s sweater – pusey – foster families, mother tells the story from the perspective of a narrator telling a once upon a time story, but it’s about her (which is odd). not bad and validating / destigmatizing for kids in foster care. the sweater is symbolic of her old life and connection to her first parents, but she gets adopted, sees her foster brothers adopted into other families and she kind of just swaps into a new sweater, which she hands down to her own child when she grows up. which feels a little fairy-taleish. it does validate some feelings kids in foster care have, like not wanting to let go of first families, sneaking food, worrying she’ll be given up. but the ending felt very tight and fairytale-like as if things were magically solved once she was adopted. not particularly interesting for non-foster/adoptive kids. the symbolism of seeing the sweater get ripped and shredded was for her experience I guess? author is adoptive/foster mother, but her bio is SUPER problematic, talking about how she wished she had been switched at birth and fantasized about being adopted. WTF?

Straight up racism – Othering, objectification & fetishizing

• Orange Peel Pocket  – lewis –  her name is “chan Ming” – her parents call her orange peel becuase they can’t pronounce her name? they claim they call her that because she tried to eat the orange peel when she was little and some of this reeks of white supremacy seeing cultures unfamiliar with new things as ignorant and humiliating. – does address how everyone expects her to know everything about china because she was born there (common frustration – also see Lydia’s transracial twitter rant about this). “Orange Peel turned bright red and said in a whisper, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” like – no. just because you look Chinese does not mean you should be expected to research and educate the class on China. she goes on to talk to Chinese immigrants with stereotypical asian immigrant jobs (tailor, calligrapher who owns an antique store, florist, noodle seller, ice cream shop owner). that would be fine, except they all slip stuff into her pockets, which gets into weird areas of consent and touching, plus it reeks of Chinese mysticism traditions. While Chinese adults do tend to treat kids like communal property, this revers pickpocketing thing is not a regular Chinese thing to do, to the best of my knowledge. Are all the chaise people expected to know each other and do this in collusion? I DO like the general idea – that parents should foster curiosity and give kids the opportunity to learn about their birthplace and heritage. but he way this was done is cringeworthy. plus her name with the orange tint to her skin – jeeeez why did they have to call her that? her name has NOTHING to do with the story, it’s just objctifying – illustrations: adorable. transracial adoption,  free emotional labor. written by white mother of transracially adopted asian girl.  AAPI (illustrator born in illinois, raised in korea from 7 through high school),
• Rice and beans – Blevins – racist, poorly written to the point of being confusing. orientalism, fetishizing (see photos of Chinese folks squatting at a stone table wearing rice paddy hats)
• Made in China– oelschlager – problematic AF, transracial chinese adoption. see negative amazon review, white saviors, tokenism, racism,  problematic for orientalism, disposable children.
• What will you be, sara mee? – kate aver avraham – author adopted korean daughter. “kisses her round-as-the-moon face.” that’s okay for us to say in reference to ourselves (see hyewong’s reference in her book to multiracial korean teacher), not okay for white folks to say since it’s so often used as an insult. “Girls can be anything in America” – both false and white supremacist BS, pretending like sexism is solved here and feeds into the narrative that Asian women are more submissive. fetishism – “my aunties pick up sara me and kiss her silky, black hair.” refers to the dol as a”prophecy game.” overall story is cute enough and explains what a dol is, and the author did have a korean sensitivity rader. illustrator ‘grew up bicultural’ in south korea. but it’s centered on older brother and Sara plays a minor roll. problematic white saviorism, doljanchi first birthday

Fox in the henhouse

• Families, Families, Families – Lang – wolves in sheep’s clothing, transracial adoption. I REALLY loved ‘Families, Families, Families’ – until I read a review by an adoptive family who were hurt by the depiction of an adopted child (predator) and parents (naive prey). I get that the illustator was trying to make a joke, but this is a real stereotype that hurts adopted children and kids in foster care. It’s literally something that keeps kids from adoption. So I had to leave it out.  ages 2.5+ covers lots of siblings and none, gay aprents, single parents (both genders), grandaprent families, aunt families, adopted, step families, married & unmarried, parental sheep (innocents) with baby wolves (wild and dangerous). given the loaded aspect of how adoptive children see themselves, especialy after going through the foster system, that isn’t okay.
• My real family – mccully – a little messed up with the way the youngest child views the ‘orphan’ they take in as the other. supposed to validate the feelings of siblings who are biologically related to parens during a foster/adption, but reinforces some shitty stereotypes, suggests that bio parent love their kids more than adoptive parents, and makes the adoption process look like a last minute decision you can make over he weekend. “Her real parents would be so happy to see her again!” also creating a weird dynamic of real=bio.
• wolfie the bunny- 2.5+ adoption, little brothers. dot’s parents adopt a baby wolf and she’s terrified he’s going to eat them all up, even though wolfie adores her. It’s supposed to be about siblings who work together and sand up for each other, but ‘ehe day louis got eaten’ is way better for that.
• The odd egg – Gravet. Duck adopts a large green speckled egg and the rest of the birds are like “humph” and they have their own eggs and duck’s finally hatches and it’s a crocogator that scares all the other birds away. The flyleaf shows duck leading the crocogator wearing fake duck feet and a scarf. problematic for adoption (wolves in sheep’s clothing)

Pinocchio syndrome – Life until adoption didn’t matter, erasure of trauma & first family

• The Call of the Swamp – cali – lovely illustrations, and if they had left out the page equating his rescue with adoption, it would have been fine.  beautiful and well written, but if we are coding this as transracial adoption it’s problematic. Parents adopt Boris “when his parents found him, they had no children, and they had given up hope that they would ever had any. The doctors had been clear: “it’s impossible, they’d said. You can’t have children. So when the couple found a newborn at the edge of the swamp, it seemed like a gift from heaven, and the paid no attention to the fact that he had gills like a fish.”  “they didn’t know if he had been abandoned or if he had lost his parents, but it didn’t matter, because he had found a new mom and dad now.” Are you  KIDDING ME with the gift from heaven and wiping the slate clean of trauma BS!?!?! Harps on not fitting in with human (white) parents, goes off in search of swamp (yeah…) and how they culturally don’t fit in with swamp family either. the book goes on to show how he needs the swamp on a biological level, but ties to his original parents and family aren’t what draw him. also if we’re equating transracial as transpecies, that’s kinda nasty racial coding
• Coffee Can Kid – czech – agree with 1-star reviewer, white savior transracial adoption. dad tells a made-up story of her adoptive mother, makes no attempt to teach her chinese so she can read the letter from her birth mother. girl says her chinese name sounds funny, implies she’s fully white now. blech, orientalism disposable children. colorblind fallacy
• Yes, I’m adopted! – zinniger – bland, vanity published with try-hard rhyming and illustrations that are pretty bleh. bio mom pictured handing baby over smiling. references that he’s ’special’ because he’s adopted.

Transspecies coding for transracial adoption – Equivocating differences in ethnicity and race as species is problematic

• the dog who had kittens – complex story, love, parenting and outgrowing
• Dino duckling– Murray – Dino born to ducks. Mom reassured him he always fits in. Can’t fly south, recognizes that differences DO matter. Mom says she will never leave him and they will all find a way to go south together (they swim). Wonderful! disability, inclusion, dinosaurs ages 3.5-5
• the littlest family’ big day – mixed color bear family with adopted fox baby ( ithink it’s a fox?). very cute ad seems like it’s an illustrator trying to make a weak story out of great illustration. move int a new neighborhood, make friends and find cool things around the area, get lost, owl finds them and brings them home. meh book, wouldn’t get again. moving, new home
• The Tiger’s egg – trans-species adoption. Tiger adopts egg and little tiger-colored bird hatches. tiger worries and fusses over it. doesn’t properly train the bird to understand its limitations and vulnerabilities, which speaks to that obliviousness theme when parents keep putting off the talk to protect their children’s innocence. illustrations are good, but don’t quite match up with the text so there’s some dissonance and the kids get a bit confused. the writing is a little unclear about how the little bird escaped from the pelican. doesn’t read as racial coding. it’s kind of a know it when you see it kind of thing, and to me the animal coding is about being big and strong and being in charge of this delicate, fragile thing that you love more than anything. it’s more of a validating book for parents
• goose – molly bang – goose is raised by woodchucks and they are a kind and loving family who do everything to make her happy, but she is still sad and needs more. coding for how people of different races need to find thier own identity outside the family within thier race, wish we weren’t coding POC as a diff species.
• The goose egg – Wong – aapi, cute but plot is already covered in the wild robot. Accidentally takes home an egg that hatchesin to a baby goose. Shows hard work of parenting and how exhausted she is. Paints herself as a goose to show her baby how to be and fly away. (Oddly whiteface and of were looking at this from transracial adoption persp it’s super problematic.) instead of finding other geese to mentor her. She comes back with her own babies. Skip it.
• All together now – anita jeram – Q hates jeram but I like this book a lot – eaah chid is special in a different way. sibling rivalry & jealousy – but the species coding eehhh
• Not Quite Narwhal – sima – Q asked for this out of the blue, particularly taken with the funny jokes in it – where he can’t swim very fast. and how he tries to learn how to walk from different animals and it takes a lot of practice and failure. it really is super funny, and beautifully illustrated. what it feels like to find people who look like you. how it’s okay to miss your family and want to be a part of both groups, board book, found critique somewhere on how this isn’t appropriate for transracial adoption
• A mother for choco– kasza – starts as a are you my mother situation but ppl say they don’t match him so they can’t be his mom. Comes across a bear. Disheartened, starts to cry. Bear comforts him,  asks “if you had a mommy, what would she do?” And the things choco says, like hold me, kiss me, sing and dance together to cheer them up, bear does.  Cocho realizes they don’t have to match to be family. One page I’m not sure of “you aren’t yellow. And you don’t have wings, or big, round cheeks, or striped feet like me!” “My goodness!” Said mrs bear.”that would make me look funny!” From a transracial standpoint, where an overwhelming number of familie are white parents with kids of color, are we saying that being a person of color looks…funny? Choco goes home with bear and we see that she has already adopted a pig, hippo, and alligator.  asian women makers of color (japanese), can’t remember if AAPI
• stellaluna – 2+ like the ugly duckling, but much nicer story
• Quackers
• The Wild Robot – publisher range for 8-11, we loved it for younger
  • The Wild Robot -OMG YES SO GOOD. 2.5 & 4.5 r2 followed suprisingly well but would get ried and wander off sometimes, Q was RIVETED and it was so had not to rad the whole thing in one night (read 5 chapters a day for 2 weeks – there is a sequel. CANNOT WAIT. Like watership down but with robots and woodland creatures. adoption, acclimating to an culture not made for you. OH SO GOOD. It’s weird enough for a robot to adopt a duck that I’m not reading racial coding in this (although I am readng disability coding) so it’s fine.
  • The Wild Robot Returns– r2 had a much harder time sitting through this one at 3.5, probably because there was less action to start out with. Q and I adored it at 5.5 though, and we read through it in just acouple sittings. satisfying resolution with just enough suspense for young kids. chapter books, epic journeys, robots

Equivocating adoption of a child to adoption of a pet (interacts with issues of speciesism)

• Mommy far, mommy near – peacock – “I have black eyes” is a weird thing for a white person to write about an asian character.  decision to kick the book off with a young child narrator describing her hair and eye color, THEN her hobbies, THEN her familiy seems off. not something I’ve heard kids introduce themselves with, and it’s a little strange that this is the defining characteristics she uses as an intro identity. intro to adoption is that htey adopt a dog. “One night during Look, Mommy said, ‘Are your yes different or the same?’ Different, I told her. Mommy’s were two circles, the outside one green, the inside one black. Mine were one large circle, very black.” ‘Yes, and your eyes are almond and mine are oval,’ Mommy said. She sat up and drew me closer.” ok this is just kind of weird? and hte confusing racism of referring to asian eyes as ‘almond shaped’ like a workaround to just saying ‘asian’ (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/16/219402847/-almond-shaped-eyes-remarkably-exotic-yet-too-foreign) which simutaneously places asians as a monolith while also erasing those of us who don’t have a full epicanthic fold. it’s just code for ‘asian’ becuase people are afraid to say it. and an easy way to create a token pan-asian character in books. mom is honest that she ‘got her from china’ which feels very ‘scoop-y’, but girl discovers that her own mother was not retrieved. the rest of the story is the girl processing this idea of having two mommies (which is a nice way to phrase it) “china mommy” near mommy & far mommy. pretends to talk with her on the phone, mom cites 1-child rule as the reason she had to leave, reassures her that her first mother loved her very much and wanted to keep her. “I asked what my mother’s name was. Mommy put her arms around me and said nobody knew her name or where she was.” SO GO FIND HER. goes on to play out adopting her stuffies. sees another Asian girl and her asian mother at the playground, has big validating feelings about it. the story accepts non-closure really well. despite the problematic issues, I’d recommend it. more bleh and dated illustrations. transracial adoption, transnational adoption. author is white adoptive parent to two chinese daughers
• Allison (Say)- Transracial adoption. Validating for her realizing she’s adopted. realizes the only person who looks like her is her doll, and both she and her doll come from far away. Allison lashes out against parents calls them not her real mommy and daddy. so we’re assuming this little girl previously believes that kids are BORN from mommies and daddies, that all babies are NOT adopted and all born here. starts asking classmates questions about their parents, realizing she’s the only trasnational adoptee in the class. feelings of jealousy that her classmates parents and grandparents look like them. gets angry and takes it out on her mother’s white dolls, her father’s baseball, feels like she was given away by her first parents. realizes she doesn’t know her ‘real’ name. finds a stray cat and decides to adopt him. a little problematic for ’the stray cat wasn’t a stray anymore.’ and our tendency to equivocate adopting a pet with adopting a child. woudln’t read this with my kids (might send message of transracial adoptees as more aggressive than biological chilren) but I could see how it might work as a validating book used with caution.
• Rosie the raven

We’ll keep you after all / jokes about abandoning children

• Nobody Noticed Minerva (Kirwan) – too many bad examples (similar to dinosaurs series) followed by good ways to get attention (helping) without packing a punch on how great that kind of attention is. was considering it for maybe 6+ (despite it clearly being written for younger kids, but the bad samples make that impossible) but they end i with a dad joke about how they might keep her after all, which is passive aggressive and problematic for foster and adoptive kids and triggering for kids whos parents use the threat of abandonment to get kids to obey

Orphans as pitiful rejects & ruined – also link to unpolished adoptive trauma list

• Foster care – one dog’s story of change – cook – this makes me uncomfortable, in ways I can’t really explain. the book starts out “my name is foster” and the way this identifies and defines the entirety of him is clumsy and offensive. of course it starts out with him looking pathetic. “I used to live in a big, red, dog house wiht my real mom and my sometimes dad.” okay that’s…confusing. the ‘real’ termoniology obvs is offensive and messed up, but the ’sometimes dad’ what the fu? your dad is your dad, reglardless of whether he’s around or not. “Now I have to live here with…” ugh. validating for kids who know foster care sucks and don’t want to be there “Everyone acts like I’m supposed to be OK with this…but I’m NOT!” addresses the fact that his stuffy was left behind when he was removed. “My mom had a hard time taking care of me. See, she’s kind of a wild cat. They told her she needed to get her fur straight, and she couldn’t handle that.” It’s pictured with mom looking wasted and frazzled, with her whiskers drooping, wearing glasses and leanign against a tree. mom is depicted as a loser. he gets removed, has to work wiht a team of specialists “My mom is working hard to get me back, maybe sometime next year.” and it subtly suggests that the only reason she’s getting back on her feet is that she’s been ‘rightfully’ punished and her child has been taken away in ransom. vagueness is worse than just making a situation specific and letting kids see themselves in // “I’ve been here for two whole years. I’ll probably never go back home. Something bad happened to my mom and dad, and hten I was all alone.” sad sack cries in teh dark looking out a window. folowed by kids all saying “you’re not alone… you have me! and me! and me! and we all have miss beulah!’ as she looks in from outside a doorway, which feels like a creepy segue. “Foster care isn’t forever, so try not to have so. much fear.” terrible awkward clumsy writing aside, that’s not true for everyone. “But you dont live in Foster care you live in Simpson care!” which is just…bullshit. “My mom is trying really hard. Getting me back is her dream. And mine too!” the cat is also kind of creepy. something about her tiny teeth and distorted face feels like a monster predator. vague non-explainations for why they can’t come home feels oddly like grooming. like htey are just supposed to do what adults say without any explicit reasons “All I wanted was to go back home. But Miss Beulah said, ’Sorry, that just can’t be!’ Right now they very best place for you, is to be right here with me.” also odd grammar and missing punctuation. does at least touch on the validation for when parents dont’ show up “Last week, my mom promised she’d come and see me, but never showed up.” which is common. “The next day at school was not a good day. I felt scared, angry, guilty, hurt, and sad. During reading, I had a melt down, and got sent home because I got mad.” odd. sent home for having FEELINGs, or sent home because her behavior is unsafe? are we punishign fkids fo feelings and that’s acceptable? also this weird thing where miss b isn’t angry, but compartmentalizes her behavior as a ’school problem’ when it’s NOT a school problem, it’s a holistic single person navigating different hings and it’s a really fucking unhealthy way to deal with it. “Miss Beulah always says, ‘what happens at school gets dealt with at school.” this woman should not be a caregiver for young children. foster blames himself, then gets empty platitudes “It’s not your fault! It just is what it is.” the fuck? how does this do anything to remove his guilt? this passage is also creepy “you might think you’re stronger than her, but Man, Miss Beulah is tough!” this could easily be translated into propoganda for a residential school. at the end we see a picture suggesting that miss b was in foster are herself. bizarre and creepy and one more julia cook disaster
• Train to somewhere – orphans. not sure if this is okay for foster care land of if-collection. train to somewhere  (bunting) children’s aid society between 1850’s to 1920’s, history of exporting roughly 100,000 homeless children from NY to the midwest. we read the story of a young girl as she watches families pick every other kid but her, tied in with the hope that her mother will be out there waiting for her at one of those stops. we also see how she has to let go of the only ‘family’ she knows as her best friend is adopted. and how people pick the strong boys, then the weak boys, then the pretty girls first.. foster, adoption. could be validating for kids who have been previously rejected or are who are awaiting placement.
• Night Out -miyares – plays on teh pathetic orphan trope. boy in an orphaneg escaps through the window nad hangs out with a turtle all night. skip it. problematic

Overall erasure of adoption – mother as the person who grew you in tummy

• The Belly book – problematic for adoption erasure
• the family book – Todd parr – includes adoptive families byt ONLY for the in-home nuclear family – suggesting that first parents are no longer your family. everyone is in that clorful style he does, animals, aliens, whatever. i’m not a fan but whatever. “Some families are big, some familis are small” points out diferences, some are all the same color, some are not. I disagree with “All families like to hug each other” becuase f you are in a blended family – probably not, and not everyone likes to be hugged, including kids with sensory issues. so. acknowledges step families, adoption, single parents (but not blended/half siblings). “All families like to celebrate special days together” – also not true. yeah I don’t recomend this book. it’s not AWFUl but it’s always a regret when I take one of his books out of the library because the dude is daft, like he lives under a rock and just poops out drawings and publishes them withou thinking too hard about it.  “All families like to celebrate special days together.” Except…no. Not all families can (because they’ve had to be separated), and not all families like to, because of abuse, trauma, etc. Ohhhh…unless Parr means the kinds of families who all live in the same house and get along.

Adoptive children are the backup option and deux ex machina gift after infertility.

• Tell me again about the night I was born– Curtis – not sure any of the makers have anything to do with adoption. Fine, I guess. Implied mom couldn’t have a baby in her tummy (infertility) falling into stereotype hat only infertile people pick adoption as a second choice. and got call to fly and pick her up the night she was born. centered on parents, not adoptee.
• The Red Thread – Lin – see patreon video from march 2019 post, transracial adoption, problematic. aapi. Lin should  know better than this!!!! Of all the authors to reinforce the white savior narrative what the  ! Asian people adopt Asian babies too! But no.  dammit. Asian orientalism, white savior transracial adoption. Entire  story centers on these saviors. At least she dedicates book to “this book is dedicated to all children adopted, the parents who loves them but could not keep hem, and the parents who traveled far to find them.” The little girl has ZERO VOICE. It starts out “this story again? You’ve heard it a hundred times. Are you sure? Okay, I’ll read it.” The white people are royalty ruling over a magnificent kingdom (America!) and something is missing. They wake up with pain in thier majestic hearts. They do infertility (because adoption is always a second choice!) and it’s coded as drinking special teas, reciting poetry, wearing special trinkets. “The king and queen began to lose hope that thier suffering would end.” Cause the only reason to adopt kids is to relieve the suffering of infertility. EW. They see the thread and try to cut it ( it very curious) but when they can’t they follow it “it was a long and difficult journey. Snow fell, and sharp rocks made holes in thier shoes.” Their clothes get all tattery and oh the poor royals trying to find a poultice to thier siffering! Woe! “They knew following the red thread was thier only cure.” Then the old trope of threatening adoptive child “they wondered what was s pulling the thread. Was it a ferocious beast or a cruel magician? Why would they do when they met whatever was on the other end?” Telling – when. They arrive on the shores of China, “the king and Queen, however, took little notice if anyone. The red thread was within thier sight. They ran to a small bundle in front of an old house.” YUP. “Whose baby is this?” The wieeen asked. “Who does she belong to?” Her words were strange to the villagers, who chartered a language that the king and queen could not understand. Finally a wrinkled elder pushed herself forward. The elder’s bespecled eyes followed the short red threads connecting the king and queen to the baby.” (CASH. The red thread is code for CASH). I can’t go on. Continue the rest of this critique over video. And take pics.  GARBAGE. problematic for orientalism disposable children.
• Wish – cordell – more reflective for parents, slow and methaphorical, best for 6+, I read i with Q explaining how long we waited o have him, and it’s validating for parents,”So we make plans for you. W learn. We build. We journey. And then we wait. We listen. So quiet, so patient, so still. And we wait… but you neever come. And everything stops. This is not what we planned. We wish you were here. time passes. We carry on. We live. We hope. We do not make plans.” this hit me – about not making plans. we read this to Q for his 6th birhday (we talked abotu this before), reeminder on how much we wanted him, and how grateful we are for him. but how are kids supposed to take it? I feel like this is just guilting htem for not showing up on time. We shouldn’t read this to kids. infertility, adoption, the land of if ,
• wild about you – 2+ infertility, adoption. see negative amazon review on parental disappointment, infertility