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/


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.


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: Holiday Guide 2022

From Newborns to Adults

The Book Corner is a consistent favorite in our Transracial Journeys monthly newsletters and our parents are always looking for age-appropriate books with themes of diversity, inclusion and adoption.  The Book Corner's creators, Avril McInally, MLS and Victoria Richards, MLS, bring us this Holiday Guide for 2022 - a great roadmap for picking books as holiday gifts for our families and friends.

Click on the image or the link below to download a 9-page annotated bibliography for families formed by transracial adoption with a focus on the intersectionalities of adoption, race, ethnicity, gender expression and identity. 

Download Holiday Guide 2022

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: My Seven Black Fathers

My Seven Black Fathers:

A Young Activist’s Memoir
Of Race, Family, and the
Mentors Who Made
Him Whole

By Will Jawando

 

Recommended books for white mother of black son

Will Jawando is a civil rights lawyer, an activist, and a loving husband and father of four. Currently a councilmember in Montgomery County, Maryland, he has worked for Nancy Pelosi, Sherrod Brown, and Barack Obama. My Seven Black Fathers is the story of how Will grew from a young boy with a white mother and an absent father to a successful adult. In his book, Will celebrates the Black men who stepped up to provide guidance and support – from a fourth grade teacher to the President of the United States. My Seven Black Fathers is an enjoyable, inspiring, and hopeful read.

The book is also a call to action. The author encourages Black men to become mentors, and encourages white people to “relearn and retell the story of Black men in this country and in turn help to shape a new story about who America is… help enable mentoring relationships between Black men and boys…” Will Jawando is “…working for a future that’s less like the past, a future where race and gender are less predictive of our outcomes, especially those of Black boys.”

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: Why Not You?

Why Not You?

Written by Ciara and Russell Wilson
Illustrated by Jessica Gibson
Preschool-2nd grade

 

Book Recommendations for Transracial Adoption

How can children make their big dreams come true? The encouraging rhyming text of this colorful picture book encourages kids to believe in themselves, work hard, and try again when they meet obstacles along the way. The joyful illustrations are action-packed with diverse children playing and pursuing their dreams. Why Not You is a happy and inspiring confidence booster!

Book Recommendations for Families Formed in Transracial Adoption

Our Transracial Journeys families regularly seek out books to share with their children and to read for themselves. We are fortunate to have a resource in our Transracial Journey's Secretary on Board of Direcors, Avril McInally. With a Master of Library Science from Kent State University and over 35 years as a public librarian, Avril and her colleagues 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.