Customer Reviews

The Mulberry Bird: An Adoption Story

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is intended for older children who have begun asking why their birth mothers could not care for them. It provides a nice jumping off point for an important talk.

There are deficiencies, true enough. But no single adoption book can explain every situation to every child. Expecting that is expecting too much. After all, every adopted child came to his family differently. Other titles that one might consider to help an adopted child include Randall Hicks' Adoption Stories for Young Children, Fred Rogers' Let's Talk About Adoption, Roslyn Banish's A Forever Family, Horrace, Jonathan London's Koala for Katie and Did My First Mommy Love Me. The last was written by an actual birth mother for her child.

Older children might also enjoy parts of Touched by Adoption, which includes 75 poets and writers who were themselves either birth parents, adopted or adoptive parents.

Whatever titles one uses, it is important to let an adopted child know that the family nest in which he landed was built to last forever. This book gets that message across. Alyssa A. Lappen

We just recently adopted a sibling group of three boys ages 5,4,2. They are so young and had a hard time understanding why they were put up for adoption. This book has helped them to understand that their birth mom did this out of love. What a wonderful story to share with any adopted child!!!!! My oldest son wants me to read this book to him EVERYDAY!

Finally, a children's book about adoption that doesn't ignore the birthmother. The Mulberry Bird even puts her front and center, where she belongs--for after all, who makes adoption possible if not the birthmother?

This book is realistic and well-done. The art is of high quality, and children seem to enjoy the story. The only improvement that could be made would be to somehow acknowledge that some adoptions are fully open.

I read this to my 5 year old girl last night. We both agreed that it was a sad story with an OK ending.

To me it was an allegory of a homeless single mother, abandoned by her mate, heroically trying (and failing) to care for her baby. Parenthood overwhelms her.

With the help of the kindly advisor (the owl), she is able to place the baby with another species of birds.

This book probably would be most appropriate for older multi racial kids.

After reading it my daughter says: "Daddy I love you and Mommy so much and I never want to live with another family. I never want to be adopted"!!

(Consequently, I thought it best that I didn't bring up the subject of her own birthmother, who she knows very well)!

As a recent birthmother participating in an open adoption I ordered this story to read to my birthdaughter. Although parts of the story explain the adoption process quite well, I didn't like the allusion to the fact that the Mulberry Bird gave her baby up because of her own incompetence in caring for it. The only reference given to the birthfather was that "he had flown off before the baby was born". I don't like the idea of teaching adopted children that their birthfathers take off and their birthmothers are incompetent.

This book was also extemely wordy and appropriate for older children only.

The Mulberry Bird would be most appropriate for your family if you have a fairly closed international adoption where the birthmother took care of the child for a while before relinquishing him/her. It would not be as applicable in an open adoption situation or where the child was relinquished at birth.

The story itself is fairly contrived and very sad. The mother bird really loves her baby bird but after many weeks she realizes she cannot keep her son safe by herself (the father bird flew out of the picture before the baby bird even hatched). She visits the wise old owl for help and he suggests that she give her child up for adoption. Does he help her by returning her baby to the nest or by finding food for it? No, the ONLY option the owl presents the mother bird is to give her baby bird up for adoption to a faraway bird family (of a different species) and to say good-bye to him forever. She reluctantly agrees but always loves her baby bird even though she is no longer with him. The baby bird forgets all about his life with his birthmother.

This story may be a good discussion starting point for some adopted children, but it just as easily could give them nightmares. This book was so heartwrenching it caused my four-year-old daughter to sob quite hard after we read it, so hard that I could not even discuss the book with her. I am going to wait a couple of years before I try reading it with her again, if at all. Worst of all, the story only somewhat applies to her life, and I worry about what images the book has put into her head. Now I must endeavor to clean up any erroneous ideas that the Mulberry Bird Book gave her and to help her understand that her own story has both similarities and major differences.

This is a gentle way to introduce the young adoptee to the love of the human birthmother, and there is no need for the child fully to conceptualize yet the concepts of birth and adoption. Brodzinsky very cleverly introduces the fact to very young children that there was no father bird to help, that he had flown away long before the mother built her nest and laid her pale blue egg. The images of the mother bird and her struggles will instill love in the children for the little mother bird and at the same time love for the birthmother is sown and admiration for how hard she tried to protect her baby through all the storms, but failed to do so. The adoptive parents of the little bird are also shown to be loving and understanding of the baby's occasional grief. A charming story.
Gisela Gasper Fitzgerald, author of ADOPTION: An Open, Semi-Open or Closed Practice?

I am a therapist working with children in foster care. There are very few children's adoption books that can be applied to a foster child's experience of being adopted. Most books are written about private adoptions both domestically and internationally. The Mulberry Bird is the first book I have found useful in my therapy sessions with younger foster children who have lived with a foster family for a period of time before being adopted by them. This book helps me explain to a young child the reasons he/she is in foster care. Their mother could not care for them on their own so their foster family had to care for them. Even in situations of abuse and neglect this book is useful in helping open the discussion up for these children. A lot of people are uncomfortable with talking to children about why they cannot live with their biological mother or father. It is important that foster children have an understanding at a level that they can handle. You obviously would not go into all the horrific details about the situation that brought them into foster care, but you would give them a sense of a story that they can hold onto so they can understand where they came from in a sense. When they are older they can expand on this simple story, but in the meantime they can have an explanation so they won't somehow blame themselves which suprisingly enough some kids do when left to their own devices. If anyone knows of anymore adoption books that can be applied to a foster child's adoption experience, please write a recommendation and include the title of the book. Thank you!

We read the original version to our adopted daughter until she was old enough to read it herself. She's now 22 yrs old and still calls this book her favorite book. It obviously struck a chord with her. Her adoption was a closed adoption---she's from Korea.

This is one of the better adoption books we've found. The story is quite touching. Our 4 year olds like to hear me read it. It is well written (no bad rhymes or childish language), which is far too unusual in adoption books for children. My only criticism is that it could have used better editing--tends to go on at times and this is suppose to be a children's book. Sensitive-types, be warned: I can't read this book without crying. Luckily, my children are use to it.