Book Corner – March 2024

Reviewed by Kristen Perry, TRJ Parent

In the Key of Us

By Mariama Lockington

Not only is In the Key of Us by Mariama Lockington written by a transracial adoptee, but it also is a Stonewall Honor Book for LGBTQ+ books. Thus, it has the power to speak to many identities represented within our families and communities. The story is told through the alternating perspectives of Andi and Zora, the only two Black girls at a prestigious, nearly all-white music camp. Andi is struggling with the death of her mother, which is affecting her ability to play the trumpet. Zora is buckling under the pressure of her parents who expect her to be a flute prodigy, when what she really wants is to be a dancer. Over the course of the summer, the girls experience many challenges and ultimately discover the power of their relationship.

In the Key of Us is a wonderful exploration of first love, an ode to the arts, and a powerful statement about discovering your true self. Although transracial adoption is not the focus of this book in the way that it is in Lockington’s first book (For Black Girls Like Me), there are many relevant themes such as loss of first family/family of origin and being the only Black person in a sea of whiteness. Although the book is advertised for ages 10-14, I believe that teens and adults will also enjoy the book and find it meaningful – I know I did!

 

Discussion Questions:  The following questions will help you and your family open up important conversations about experiences of adoption, identity, and differences of race. Before you engage in these discussions be sure you have grounded yourself in the questions and are ready to both listen to the experiences of the children and youth you are engaging, and to share your thoughts and feelings and model conversational openness. Also, if children and young people do not want to engage in the conversation at any particular time, you can always spend some time in reflection on these questions so when the opportunity is right, you’ll be ready.      

  • Andi and Zora are the only two Black girls at the Harmony Music camp, which comes with a lot of challenges. Can you identify with some of the challenges they face?  How do they support each other? Do you have friends that support you when things are challenging? ?
  • Zora is passionate about dance, which historically has excluded many Black dancers, and finding a Black dancer as a role-model is life-changing for her. What are your passions or interests? Who can we look to as role models related to these interests?
  • In the Key of Us provides a great representation of intersectionality, particularly identities related to race and sexual orientation. What identities are important to you, and how do your identities intersect in unique ways? How are your identities perceived in the world, and in what ways might they represent challenges or privileges?

Book Recommendations for Families Created in Transracial Adoption

Kristen Perry is a TRJ parent and a professor of literacy education, specializing in family and community literacy. She and Mariama Lockington are colleagues in the University of Kentucky’s College of Education. Learn more about Mariama and connect with her on her website: https://mariamajlockington.com/ 


Book Corner – January 2024

This month we are highlighting "Adoptees Like Me" Books, a special series from Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker.  These illustrated children’s books are for elementary readers, and include Marie Discovers Her Superpowers  (2022) and Casey Conquers Bedtime (2023).

Dr. Wirta-Leiker is an adoptee, adoptive parent, and psychologist. She is a consultant for The Adoptee Mentoring Society and a contributor to I AM ADOPTEE, where she serves on their subsidized mental health program review board. She also served on the Adoptee Advisory Board for Heritage Camps for Adoptive Families and the steering committee for the Society of Adoption Professionals of Color in Adoption. You can find her series here

Marie Discovers Her Superpowers
Casey Conquers Bedtime

Book Recommendations for Families Created in Transracial Adoption

The Book Corner is a regular feature in our Transracial Journeys monthly newsletters. If you would like to receive monthly book recommendations via email, please subscribe.


The Gift of Growing up with Books to Reflect a Diverse Human Experience

by TRJ Parent and Librarian, Avril McInally

Image from The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation

Meet “Peter” the small African-American child who inspired Ezra Jack Keats “The Snowy Day”.

Ezra had noticed that the main characters in the books he illustrated were always white. That didn’t seem fair to other children, who deserved to see characters in books that looked like them. He decided that Peter would be the hero of his story because “he should have been there all along.”

Origin of the Annual TRJ Bibliography

A few years ago and with a similar thought in mind, I (TRJ parent and librarian, Avril McInally) thought about searching for books for Black children with characters that look like them and reflect their experience. Then, I thought of finding books featuring characters who were adopted, biracial or LGBTQIA+. So began the annotated bibliography for families formed by transracial adoption in 2021.

A year later, Vicki Richards, a children’s librarian stepped in to help find and vet these books too because, unfortunately, some still don’t quite get the adoption experience right. For the last few years, we’ve been reading lots of books and reviewing them.

2023 Bibliography for the Giving Season and All Year Long

This year, we’re attaching the 2023 Bibliography to this month’s newsletter so you can work to:

  • Support authors and illustrators who are POC (people of color)
  • Support a small, but growing group of authors who are adoptees
  • Give books to our children and families so they can see reflections of themselves in them
  • Give books to white children and families to help them understand the perspective of children who are Black or queer or who have experienced adoption
  • So you don’t miss the boat on giving your children the opportunity to grow up with beautiful books, stories and characters that reflect their experiences

I recommend supporting independent bookstores, especially Black-owned ones and purchasing your books directly from them. If you want to visit a brick-and-mortar shop and don’t know where to find one, just call your local public library and ask a librarian to help you locate one. We have also included links to each book as found on bookshop.org which helps to support independent bookstores.

I’ll see you at TRJ camp in Athens, Ohio next summer with a fully-stocked book sale featuring our book picks for 2024!

Avril

This post is from our December, 2023, 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.


Book Corner – December 2023

The Night Before Kwanzaa

By Natasha Wing
Illustrated by  Amy Wummer and Kirsti Jewel
Pre-kindergarten - Grade 2 

A young boy is excited for the arrival of his older brother. He is looking forward to celebrating Kwanzaa with him and the rest of their family. As a candle is lit on the Kinara each night, simple (yet heartwarming) illustrations depict the accompanying seven principles of Kwanzaa.

There is a familiarity in this sweet book as it may remind older readers of “The Night Before Christmas” - one of the most well-known poems about the holiday.

This is a recommended read for multicultural families as it blends an old tradition (reading the old poem) with new ones (celebrating the principles of Kwanzaa).

Books for Transracial Families

Book Recommendations for Families Created in Transracial Adoption

The Book Corner is a regular feature in our Transracial Journeys monthly newsletters. If you would like to receive monthly book recommendations via email, please subscribe.


Book Corner-November 2023

Our Little Kitchen

By Jillian Tamaki
Ages 4-8

This is a beautifully-illustrated, warm and cozy read with a focus on preparing food with love and with a group of diverse children and adults. Highly recommended not just for Thanksgiving but for any part of the year when you want to pull comfort from the words you read along with the pictures you see.

Jillian Tamaki is an award winning, Canadian author who shows how to build community, love and nurture around the preparation of food in a fun and whimsical manner.As the characters ask the following questions, you could ask the same of the children you’re reading the book with:

● Is your body warm?
● Is your belly full?
● Would you like seconds?

Book Recommendation for Transracial Adoptive Families

Book Recommendations for Families Created in Transracial Adoption

The Book Corner is a regular feature in our Transracial Journeys monthly newsletters. If you would like to receive monthly book recommendations via email, please subscribe.


Books, Books and More Books featuring Black protagonists!

by Avril McInally and Vicki Richards

August is the month we prepare our children for going back to school and April’s August card for Facing and Embracing Differences of Race and Culture asks some introspective questions that might prepare our families for the school year to come.

  • What can you do to better prepare me for what I might face at school?
  • How do you think your experiences in school were different from mine?

To help us adults to remember and to introduce our children to a range of possibilities and experiences that might unfold for them in the academic year ahead, we choose to focus on differences of race and culture via our recently-launched Transracial Journeys Bibliography. This bibliography has been a year in the making and prepared for our families by myself (a professional adult librarian) and my friend and colleague Vicki Richards, a professional children’s librarian. From birth through adulthood, we’ve curated a collection of titles that share experiences (fictitiously and non-fictitiously) that touch on topics and stories shared from the perspective of African Americans.  Whenever we could find them, we also included stories and experiences of adoption, fostering, blended families, and LGBTQ+ people. There isn’t a lot out there about adoption, but there is more now than there has been in the past. Vicki and I are searching for more for next year’s bibliography.

In this Transracial Journeys Bibliography 2023, back-to-school and school themes are prevalent as stories like the following unfold:

  • Vanessa in “Becoming Vanessa” grapples with her name on the first day of school
  • “Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn” depicts a multicultural society experiencing the change of season
  • “Henry at Home” illustrates what happens between siblings when one of them leaves home for the first time to attend kindergarten
  • In “Class Act” we see our Black protagonist enter 9th grade in a mostly white school
  • Dax Devlon-Ross in “Letters to My White Male Friends” shares a lot about transitioning from an all Black school to an all white private school as a child in D.C.. His memoir imparts glimpses into racial situations our own children might be navigating but don’t want to talk about.

In most of the fiction for teens or young adults, there are lots of school scenarios depicting not only first love but also attending Black Lives Matter marches or children coping with racism and/or bullying.

Between us, Vicki and I have read every single title on this bibliography and either one or both of us has wholeheartedly endorsed the books that made it to our list. It’s in your hands to promote, support and share this growing, beautiful body of Black authors and illustrators. It’s in your power to create a reading experience for your children populated with bedtime stories, humor, comics, memoirs and literary experiences featuring Black characters and protagonists. There is a literary African American canon, unfolding and building momentum, of authors and illustrators we should be sharing with all of our children (Black and white). It would be a loss to not grow up experiencing the books of Kadir Nelson, Sharon Flake, Jewell Parker Rhodes, Sharon Draper, Kwame Alexander, Justin Reynolds, Jason Reynolds or L.L. McKinney to name a few.

It’s our hope that you not only share these titles with your children, but that you (the grown ups) read them too in order to get some insight into the landscapes our children navigate away from home and away from us (their parents, their teachers, their neighbors, etc.). We also would ask that you share these books with non Black or non adopted children and adults to help promote more understanding of the sometimes invisible challenges of racism or phobias our children encounter. These books help us get back to Facing and embracing differences of race and culture. Sometimes this embrace can be as simple as cracking open a book, turning the page and sharing it with a loved one.

With a love of and wonder in reading,

Vicki Richards and Avril McInally

(click here to open/print/download Transracial Journeys Bibliography 2023)

This post is from our August, 2023, 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.


Book Corner – August 2023

The Skin I’m In

Sharon Flake
 Grades 6-12

Author Sharon G. Flake is a multiple-time recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award! The recipients of this award are African American authors and/or illustrators who create outstanding literature for African American children. Ms. Flake received this award for The Skin I’m In in 1999.

Seventh Grader Maleeka Madison is bullied for her dark skin. Maleeka’s father died two years ago, and Maleeka’s mom struggles to pay the bills. Making Maleeka’s clothes is one way to help make ends meet, but this is another target for bullying. When a new English teacher arrives at school, Maleeka is not only disturbed by her teacher’s sense of fashion and her high self-esteem, but also by the large birthmark on Ms. Saunders’ face.

Ms. Saunders takes no nonsense at school as she addresses the stigma society assigns to skin color, has zero tolerance for bullying, and assigns her students more work than any other teacher. Could be that Maleeka has a few things to learn from her new teacher.

Book Corner: Recommended Books Transracially Adopted Children

Book Recommendations for Families Created in Transracial Adoption

Our Transracial Journeys families regularly seek out books to share with their children and to read for themselves, as white parents of black children. We are fortunate to have a resource in the Transracial Journey's Board of Direcors Secretary, Avril McInally. Avril and her colleague, Vicki Richards, collaborate to curate phenomenal book recommendations for our children and parents.  Both have Masters of Library Science and over 30 years' experience as professional librarians. The Book Corner is a regular feature in our Transracial Journeys monthly newsletters. If you would like to receive monthly book recommendations via email, please subscribe.


Book Corner – July 2023

Bayou Magic

Jewell Parker Rhodes
 Ages 8-12

Focus: Girls, African folklore, Slavery, Environmentalism

Almost ten-years-old, Maddy goes to Bon Temps, a mystical place in the Bayou, to spend the summer with her grandma. While there, she makes friends with a boy named Bear who shows her where to fish, swim and explore. Queenie, her grandma, teaches Maddy to cook, be a good steward of the earth and a little of their family’s ancestral magic. Queenie also tells Maddy the story of their ancestor Membe who came to America as an enslaved person. This is a magical tale that will empower readers as it introduces them to difficult topics.

Bayou Magic

Book Recommendations for Families Created in Transracial Adoption

Our Transracial Journeys families regularly seek out books to share with their children and to read for themselves, as white parents of black children. We are fortunate to have a resource in the Transracial Journey's Board of Direcors Secretary, Avril McInally. Avril and her colleague, Vicki Richards, collaborate to curate phenomenal book recommendations for our children and parents.  Both have Masters of Library Science and over 30 years' experience as professional librarians. The Book Corner is a regular feature in our Transracial Journeys monthly newsletters. If you would like to receive monthly book recommendations via email, please subscribe.


Book Corner – June 2023

Second Dad Summer

Benjamin Klas and Fian Arroyou
Grades 4-7, Ages 9-12

This story about friendship and family takes place over a hot summer near downtown Minneapolis. Jeremiah is spending the summer with his dad and his dad’s boyfriend, Michael. Jeremiah is sometimes embarrassed by Michael’s outgoing, colorful personality, and he’s reluctant to let down his barriers with his dad’s boyfriend. However, a new friendship, gardening and a rocky relationship with a grumpy, elderly neighbor work to build a relationship between the two.

Book Recommendation for Diverse Families

Book Recommendations for Families Created in Transracial Adoption

Our Transracial Journeys families regularly seek out books to share with their children and to read for themselves, as white parents of black children. We are fortunate to have a resource in the Transracial Journey's Board of Direcors Secretary, Avril McInally. With a Master of Library Science from Kent State University and over 35 years as a public librarian, Avril and her colleague, Vicki Richards, collaborate to curate phenomenal book recommendations for our children and parents.   The Book Corner is a regular feature in our Transracial Journeys monthly newsletters. If you would like to receive monthly book recommendations via email, please subscribe.


Book Corner – May 2023

Letter to My Daughter

by Maya Angelou

A beautiful book full of accessible, beautiful insights that was dedicated to the daughter Maya Angelou never had. It’s filled with essays, poetry, lived-experience, kindness and advice for all of the world’s daughters. This small volume can be used as a touchstone for the meaningfulness of what it means to be a human being.

Letter to My Daughter

Book Recommendations for Families Created in Transracial Adoption

Our Transracial Journeys families regularly seek out books to share with their children and to read for themselves, as white parents of black children. We are fortunate to have a resource in the Transracial Journey's Board of Direcors Secretary, Avril McInally. With a Master of Library Science from Kent State University and over 35 years as a public librarian, Avril and her colleague, Vicki Richards, collaborate to curate phenomenal book recommendations for our children and parents.   The Book Corner is a regular feature in our Transracial Journeys monthly newsletters. If you would like to receive monthly book recommendations via email, please subscribe.