by Pact Staff

April 2025

Reading to children is one of life’s great joys—and a crucial parenting tool. Exposing children to books from a young age helps them learn about themselves, and the world, while also building their language and cognitive skills. Reading together can be a time of deep intimacy and bonding between parents and children. Even children who know how to read can enjoy reading together with their parents—story time, family reading time, or family book club can be treasured rituals. For adopted children, listening to and becoming comfortable with their adoptive parents’ voices is part of the attachment process. Hearing you read and talk about adoption through books creates an invitation to honesty and openness that can last a lifetime.

Pact recommends parents start talking with children about adoption and race as soon as possible, rather than waiting “until they’re old enough to understand.” Beginning these conversations at a young age starts normalizing the topics and the language, allowing parents time to get comfortable and develop their own groove, laying the groundwork for important future conversations. At every age and developmental stage, books are a great springboard for parent-child conversations about the complexities of adoption, race, and identity.

Mirrors and windows

All children need mirrors and windows. Mirrors reflect children’s identities and experiences. Windows give children opportunities to understand and identify with people who are different from them.

Have fun surrounding your child with books that spark their imagination and curiosity. On their pages your child should encounter plenty of children and adults who share their own racial identity, as well as an array of people from other cultures. If you live in a very homogenous community, books can be an important window into the true diversity of the world. If you return to your own childhood favorites, be on the lookout for outdated, stereotyped language, images, or stories—some books don’t age well.

Children love books that mirror their own families. You may not find one book about a family that reflects yours exactly. Say you are a Korean American woman, your wife is white, and you have adopted a Guatemalan child. You will want to collect books about children with two moms, about transracial adoptive families, and about Guatemalan/Latinx and Korean/Asian families, as well as books that introduce a broad range of family formations (two-parent families, divorced co-parenting families, one-parent families, blended families, families of various racial backgrounds, families with different kinds of adoption and/or kinship relationships).

By exposing your child to many different experiences and perspectives, you help them see that there is no universal standard that fits all families. Being exposed to a wide spectrum of families helps children understand they can find allies who have shared experiences when they are in groups where no one else shares their specific history and family makeup.

Children who are adopted want and need to read about other families formed by adoption. Avoid the temptation to only expose them to direct reflections of their own history and experience. There is no “perfect” book that will answer all a child’s questions and meet all of their needs—you should plan to introduce multiple adoption narratives to your child at every developmental stage.

Adoption is complicated

Seek out and cherish any children’s books that make room for the grief and loss involved in adoption, as well as the joy. These can be particularly hard to find for younger ages. You can broaden your options by looking for books about sitting with feelings of sadness or anger, without a specific focus on adoption.

Some parents express concern about reading “sad” books to children. “Sad” books do not create sadness in children, but evoke feelings they already know. If something in a book is familiar to a child, it will resonate with them. They will learn they aren’t the only one who worries about, for example, the loss of a beloved pet. If they could care less, the book won’t speak to them. But if loss and abandonment are important in their emotional life, they’ll read that “sad” book again and again, and understand they are not alone.

Seek out the rare children’s books that acknowledge first/birth family. In many books, the first/birth parents are either entirely absent (the narrative begins with the child’s arrival in the adoptive family), are portrayed in a negative light, or make a brief appearance at the beginning and then disappear, never to be mentioned again. In these instances, you can talk about with your child about what is missing from a story. If you mention it first, they will feel empowered to do so too.

More than rainbows and unicorns

Look for books written by adoptees, and books that center the adoptee experience. There are many books written by adoptive parents that center their joy at welcoming a longed-for child, presenting adoption as a “happy ending” rather than the beginning of a complicated, lifelong journey. Avoid narratives that are relentlessly positive about adoption or posit it as “God’s plan”—these can discourage children from exploring their “both/and” feelings about losing one family and joining another.

When books get it “wrong”

Of course, your goal is to fill your home with books that reflect the values you want to share with your child. But you shouldn’t necessarily avoid all books that are problematic in their approach to adoption, race, and identity. Learning to recognize when people are biased or wrong in their assumptions about adoption, race, and identities is an important—sometimes life-saving—skill, one that children need to develop for their own protection. Analyzing books’ implicit biases can be a great way for you and your child to practice this skill together, in preparation for times when they are being othered or targeted and you are not there to help them to avoid internalizing other people’s judgements.

The words on the page are just the beginning

Remember, books are springboards for conversation. Model for your child pausing to ask questions, or sharing memories or feelings that come up as you read. Keeping your focus on the characters in the story (“Why do you think she did that?” “Do you think that’s fair, what happened to him?”) allows your child the safety to express opinions without having to speak directly about their own situation. This benefits parents as well as children: You can gain insight into your child’s experience even if they don’t feel ready or able to articulate their own painful or complex feelings.

If you are not adopted yourself, keep in mind that your child will have questions and concerns that are different from yours—ones that arise from their personal experience of being adopted. These can include:

• Wondering about and/or longing for their birth parents—and wondering if that’s okay.
• Noticing that their family is different from other kids’ families. Trying to figure out how to explain the difference to themselves and to curious friends and strangers.
• Feeling sad or angry about being adopted, and being afraid to talk about those feelings.
• In transracial adoptive families, seeing that they look different from their parents and/or siblings, sensing that they (and others who look like them) are treated differently, and wondering how they fit into their family and the world around them.

Don’t shy away from books that address these questions, or conversations that explore them. You don’t always have to have the answer, or make everything okay. It’s appropriate to say, “I’m not sure—what do you think?” or “You’re right—that is complicated” or “Yes, that is sad.” These moments can be opportunities for you and your child to research and learn more, seeking answers or at least a deeper understanding of the complexity of their adoption experience. This too can further deepen the closeness between you and your child.

Reading together in an interactive and exploratory way will bring you and your child closer together, and strengthen your foundation of brave, honest love.