Welcome Home, Forever Child

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Finally….a book that genuinely celebrates a young child joining their forever family past infancy. With its touching message of love and reassurance, and whimsical illustrations, Welcome Home, Forever Child is sure to be cherished by children and parents alike. While best suited to children ages two to eight, this gem will undoubtedly be enjoyed by older children as well. Most children’s adoption books reflect infant adoptions, and may not be appropriate for the older child who spent their early years in foster care or an orphanage. Welcome Home, Forever Child is a much needed book that social workers and therapists will want to recommend to families who adopted their child past the age of two. The book helps parents reassure children of their permanent place in the new family, and of how much they are wanted and loved. It will also make a very special and meaningful keepsake gift for a child upon joining his or her new family, upon finalizing the adoption, or upon the anniversary of either event.

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Book Review by R. Spottswood

This book and its pictures of a middle class cat family — walking, dressing and living like humans in a suburban environment — has a charming potential which it does not quite fulfill.

The message is one of adopting and accepting an older — four-year-old — child (cat) into the (cat) family, in which a still-older natal sibling already lives, all in apparent harmony.

The potential is for raising and addressing some of the issues, feelings and conflicts which an older-child adoption brings up every day, for all parties.  But these are never raised.  The cat family always smiles (except for one scene with an injured knee), and all is explained by the parents’ being eternally grateful because the new child is an answer to their prayers and a blessing from God, delivered in Dr. Suess rhyming verse.

Despite copious endorsements from many weighty authors in the field, I give this book a C for missed issues and two-dimensional feelings, a B for the pedantic rhythmic voice, which sounds like Hallmark but will appeal to young children with its dependable preverbal patterns, and an A for the art work, which draws us in with rich color and inclusive family settings.

Mildly recommended.

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