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Category: Book Corner

Chester Keene Cracks the Code

Book Corner – May 2025

Chester Keene Cracks the Code

by Kekla Magoon
Grades 3-7

Chester Keene’s mom is always worrying about him, so Chester tries his best to hide bad things from her. When a bully gives him a black eye, Chester tells his mom he ran into something. Chester really needs someone to talk to. His father left when Chester was a baby, but presents arrive every birthday and Christmas. When Chester finds an email address in one of the packages, he is glad to finally have a way to communicate with his father. Chester sends messages and receives advice in return, but he really wants to see his dad in person. He believes his father doesn’t come around because he is a secret agent on a mission, but the truth is more complicated and hard to face. Chester Keene Cracks the Code has mystery, adventure – and a lot of heart.

Related Articles About the Roles of Mothers and Fathers

Becoming Vanessa - Adoptee Names

Book Corner – April 2025, Becoming Vanessa

Becoming Vanessa

by Vanessa Brantley-Newton
Ages 3-6

During a month that we focus on the significance of names for transracial adoptees, Becoming Vanessa, by Vanessa Brantley-Newton feels like a relevant recommendation.

Vanessa wants to feel special on her first day of school, but everything goes wrong. The outfit she picked is too fancy, and her name has too many letters. She shares her sad feelings with her parents, who help her discover how special her name is – and how special she is, too! A super book to share at the beginning of the school year.

Watch a special YouTube video for a read aloud with the author:

Related Articles About Adoptee Names

Blended: Book recommendation for Transracial Adoptees

Book Corner – March 2025

Blended

by Sharon Draper
Grades 4-7

Told from the perspective of an 11 year old, whose parents are divorced, Izzy / Isabella relays her experiences being shuttled between both parents’ homes (she can’t call either house her home). Her mother is white and her father is Black and not much is ever said to her about being two different races until a racist event (targeted at her close friend) happens at school. Suddenly, Izzy is forced to “check the box” as to what her racial identity is and she doesn’t know what to do.

As the story unfolds, more events related to Izzy’s racial identity occur. A boy seems to like Izzy, but it hurts when she finds out he's curious about her “exotic” looks. When she and her Black stepbrother get profiled by the police while getting ice cream, they’re both pulled from the car and the situation becomes racist and violent.

Since everything is relayed in Izzy’s/Isabella’s voice, the story is accessible to young adolescents. There are tough topics related to blended families, divorce, race and racism that make this a reading journey to be shared between responsive parents or adults and children reading this book.

Visit Sharon Draper's website for more resources supporting Blended, including a study guide, discussion questions and additional activities.

All Ways Black: Recommended Book Collection

Book Corner – February 2025

All Ways Black

Cree Myles, Curator of All Ways Black

Instead of one book and author this month, we’re sharing a robust resource from Penguin Random House.  All Ways Black is a year-round celebration of Black authors and stories, a place to honor the depth and breadth of experiences around what it means to be Black. This is a community dedicated to Black literature – reading, sharing, living, and loving it. All Ways Black aims to help you discover incredible authors and books and support the next wave of Black writers. There are all kinds of goodies on this site - take a look and let us know what you find.  

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/all-ways-black/ 

Somewhere Sisters

Book Corner – January 2025

Somewhere Sisters: a Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family

by Erika Hayasaki
Ages: Adult

Vietnamese twins Loan and Ha were separated when they were babies.  Ha was raised by her aunt in a loving home in rural Vietnam.  Loan was adopted, renamed Isabella, and grew up in a loving home in a Chicago suburb.  Isabella’s American family weren’t told their daughter was a twin, and when they found out, Isabella’s mom started to search for Ha.  After many years, Isabella and Ha finally met and began to truly reunite.  

Somewhere Sisters is the story of Isabella, Ha, and their families, but it’s much more.  Their story is a framework for information about many aspects of adoption and twinship.  Readers will learn about twin research, the history of international and transracial adoption, how a child’s environment affects them, and much more.  Somewhere Sisters is touching, informative – and very hard to put down!

Listen to Here & Now‘s Deepa Fernandes speaks with journalist and author Erika Hayasaki. Hayasaki’s new book “Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family,” tells the story of identical twins who were born in Vietnam. One was adopted by a well-to-do white American family, the other was raised by her maternal aunt. The two eventually met as teenagers.

Holiday Traditions for Transracial Families

Making and Breaking Traditions:

A Holiday Reflection for Our Extended Family

As the year draws to a close, it’s a perfect time to reflect on the traditions we hold dear and consider how we shape new ones to honor the diversity within our families. This month, we are thrilled to share our 2024-2025 Bibliography for the Giving Season and All Year Long, a curated collection of books that celebrate stories of identity, culture, and connection. This guide is a testament to the power of books in fostering understanding, self-discovery, and belonging for adopted persons and their families.  We thank Avril for always curating such an amazing list!  

The Power of Stories to Build Bridges

For families extended through adoption, especially transracial adoption, holidays can bring unique opportunities to navigate the balance between celebrating inherited traditions and creating new ones that honor a child's racial and cultural heritage. This is no small task, but it’s also one of the greatest gifts we can give our children: the chance to see themselves reflected in the stories we tell and the celebrations we share.

Our 2024 Bibliography encourages families to explore books that:

  • Support authors and illustrators who are people of color to ensure diverse voices are celebrated and heard.
  • Highlight the experiences of adopted persons, offering powerful insights for families and a sense of connection for children.
  • Provide mirrors and windows: Books where children can see themselves and their experiences reflected, while also opening windows into the lives of others.

Whether you’re raising Black children in a white family, nurturing a child with queer identities, or simply working to foster empathy and inclusivity in your home, books are an invaluable resource.

Holiday Giving Guide: A Few Quick Tips

When selecting books this season, consider these tips to make your giving even more impactful:

  1. Shop Independent: Support Black-owned and independent bookstores whenever possible. Not sure where to start? Ask your local librarian for recommendations or visit bookshop.org.
  2. Think Broadly: Don’t just gift books to the children in your life—share them with educators, neighbors, and friends to help spark broader conversations.
  3. Pair Books with Action: Use stories as a springboard to learn more about your child’s cultural heritage or to find ways to celebrate their traditions.

This post is from our December, 2024, newsletter. If you would like to get our newsletter in your inbox each month, as well as information about our annual Transracial Journeys Family Camp and our monthly Zoom call to provide support for our transracial adoption parents please subscribe.

The Connected Parent - Book Recommendation

Book Corner – August 2024

Reviewed by Bear Howe, TRJ white adoptive parent

The Connected Parent

by Karyn Purvis, Lisa Qualls and Emmelie Pickett
Adult Nonfiction

The Connected parent offers a framework for parenting called Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI). TBRI is an attachment-based and trauma-informed approach designed to support the complex needs of children with histories of trauma. This framework focuses on three core principles: empowerment, connection and correction, and first asks parents do their own inner work of healing and introspective processing in order to show up for their children with the most clarity possible.

The book provides personal anecdotes, including religious ones, as well as research-based insights from neuroscience, attachment theory and developmental psychology, and offers practical and actionable strategies for parents. This book aims to help parents understand more intentionally the importance of helping children feel safe, valued and connected, which is particularly important and effective for children who have experienced early harm, neglect, abuse, toxic stress and other adverse childhood experiences.

Karyn Purvis is associated with Texas Christian University, the number five most conservative college in Texas, where students are able to study various religions and are not required by the school to attend any services. My sense of this book is that there is good science here that I’ve seen in many other non-religious-based books and articles, as well as in my own experiences of non-religious therapy. The religious anecdotes may help anchor parents who practice Christianity, and are not so emphasized that non-Christian parents can’t just leave those behind while gaining science-backed insights.

Reviewed by Bear Howe, TRJ white adoptive parent.

It's Not About You

Book Corner – July 2024

By Becca Howe, TRJ Parent

Book Corner – Brooke Randolph: It’s Not About You

Understanding Adoptee Search, Reunion, & Open Adoption

It’s Not About You: Understanding Adoptee Search, Reunion, & Open Adoption is a book written for adoptive and birth parents and their therapists. After repetitive conversations with adopted persons (and sometimes their parents) about reactions to their search and reunion, Brooke knew adoptive and parents of origin needed a book on the topic.  

Brooke is a therapist, author, speaker, trainer and an adoptive parent who enjoys sharing with groups of all sizes whether that is in person or online. Both therapeutically and personally, she is committed to never stop learning and growing. Primary specialties for Brooke include adoption competent therapy, Brainspotting, relationship building, and developmental trauma. Brooke is a certified Imago Relationship Therapist, a Certified Brainspotting Trainer & Consultant, and coordinator for the groups Brainspotting Indy and Brainspotting with Adoption.

This year, we are thrilled to have Brooke joining us at the Transracial Journeys Family Camp to help bring to life parent work sessions  centered on creating a brighter path to inclusivity for transracially adopted persons as well as the extended family.  

https://brooke-randolph.com/author-brooke/

Max and the Tag Along Moon

Book Corner – June 2024

By Kristen Perry, transracial adoptive parent and professor of literacy education

Max and the Tag-Along Moon, by Floyd Cooper

Floyd Cooper’s picture book, Max and the Tag-Along Moon, is the perfect story to celebrate all the fathers, grandfathers, and other father-figures in our children’s lives. It is a wonderful ode to the love between a grandfather and grandson and to the things that connect us to each other, even across distances.

In this sweet story, Max is sad to be saying goodbye to his grandfather after a visit. Granpa reminds Max that they see the same moon, even when they are in different places. Max watches the moon all the way home, but he becomes sad and misses Granpa when the moon disappears behind clouds. When the moon reappears, “Max knew that whenever he saw the moon, he would think of Granpa, on and on.”

Max and the Tag-Along Moon is appropriate for children from preschool on up. It offers a wonderful opportunity to facilitate conversations about the connections, both real and symbolic, that family members have with each other, as well as the ways we show our love for each other. 

Max and the Tag ALong Moon

Discussion Prompts:

  • Think about a family member. What is something special that connects you with that person? 
  • Who are the father figures in your life? Think about fathers, grandfathers, stepfathers, uncles, neighbors, and/or friends of the family. How do these father figures show their love for you (or take care of you)?
  • What are things you do (or could do) when you’re missing someone that you love?

Book Recommendations for Families Created in Transracial Adoption

Kristen Perry is a transracial adoptive parent and professor of literacy education.

Monstrous

Book Corner – May 2024

Reviewed by Rebecca Howe

Monstrous, by Sarah Myer 

Monstrous is a young adult graphic novel memoir written and illustrated by nonbinary comic artist and transracial adoptee Sarah Myer. The story is about Myer's childhood years in the 1990s and early 2000s in rural Maryland, taking us from an imaginative and emotionally explosive early childhood, through an adolescence rife with bullying, racism, homophobia, ableism, mental health struggles and the protagonist's reckoning with identity, how to stick up for themselves, take responsibility for themselves and find self-acceptance, all with the help of art and anime.

Sarah was adopted from Korea by white parents as an infant, and they live in rural Maryland on a farm. Sarah becomes obsessed with making art after seeing the Little Mermaid with their mom as a preschooler. They don’t want to play dolls the way the girls want to, and they play well with the boys until they are told to go away for not being a boy. When Sarah sees a Sailor Moon cartoon on tv, their entire world begins to change, as anime shows them a world wider and more diverse than their physical community, and eventually leads them to find other artists and people who think more like they do and accept them for who they are. 

Sarah struggles with turning to violence as the only way they can defend themselves when adults at school won't help, and pushes friends away as a way to process self-rejection and the overwhelming negativity coming at them daily. By the time Sarah is finishing high school, they have found a few good, safe friends in theater and through anime, and upon finally watching Neon Genesis Evangelion, find the empowerment they need to realize they are the only person who can decide what their life gets to be. We get to see Sarah's return to their childhood self to nurture their own sense of belonging, acceptance, kindness and excitement for the future.

 

Monstrous is a raw, emotional ode to being yourself and keeping your heart intact when others are hateful, and through periods when you might not know how to hold on to yourself anymore. While transracial adoption and racism is a big theme in this book, there are many intersectional layers to this story that will be relevant to a wide range of readers. This young adult book is marketed to people ages 14-18, but I would recommend this book to kids as young as 11, with the understanding that there are a few slight references to sex and a handful of scenes with violence in them, including illustrated images of the monster Sarah imagines lives inside them. I would also recommend this book to all adults who’ve ever felt a disconnect from their communities, or who love anime, or who love to get their hearts tugged on by a strong, imperfect, lovable protagonist who becomes the hero they never knew they could be.

Book Recommendations for Families Created in Transracial Adoption

Rebecca Howe is a white adoptive parent who is an author and artist and works in children’s literature.