Title: Yafi’s Family
Author: Linda Pettitt
Illustrator: Jan Spivey Gilchrist
Publisher: Amharic Kids; 2010
Suitable for: 4
– 8 years
Topics: Adoption, Family, Love, People & Places:
Ethiopia
Opening:
“Raaah!” “Yafi, you Big Little Lion – you scared
me! Ethiopian grandma Elsa would be very proud of that roar!”
Book Summary: An Ethiopian boy’s journey of love, loss and adoption. Yafi (Yafee), his parents, and two
sisters, eight-year-old Kari and ten-year-old Anna, remember his early life and
his adoption experience by telling stories, revisiting memories, and looking at
photographs. Yafi's Family is the story of love, loss, and a boy's discovery of
how wide and how deep the bonds of family can be.
Links to resources:
10 Five Minute Bonding Activities for Foster and Adopted
Children
Games and Activities to promote Attachment
Waiting to Belong has some wonderful tips for helping
families bond with their adoptive children.
Multi-Cultural Coloring Pages
Why I like this book:
This is a very heartwarming story that shares all the
emotions of what families go through during the adoption process. I admit I
fought back tears to no avail. Yafi’s Family is a loving tale of adoption from
other cultures. I love that this family doesn’t take away his memories of his
birth family. The story is told in the style of a conversation between Yafi and
his adoptive family as they remember the day they met Yafi, how he adjusted to
his new life with them and even validate his feelings of missing a mother he
never really knew.
I think this book is great for families who are in all
stages of adoption as it shows the different challenges and rewards that
adoptive families go through when they open their hearts and homes to children,
including challenges of adopting an older child who still has memories of his
birth family.
3 comments:
I am adopted, so adoption books mean a lot to me. I like that Yafi belongs to a family that tells him that he's adopted. That is a good thing. I like to hear about my adoption story. It is good that it is a multicultural book too. I like the cover art! :)
Hmmm....not sure if my first comment went through. Thanks for this adoption resource. I know many people who are looking for these types of books, and I'll pass this one on.
Sucha beautiful selection. I've reviewed adoption books, but I must say I like this message. Will have to look it up. We adopted a son from India, so I am partial to multicultural adoptions. The cover is very inviting.
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