WE DON'T LOOK LIKE OUR MOM AND DAD

by Harriet Langsam Sobol ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 20, 1984

A photo-talk, in effect, on the Levin family--where sons Eric and Joshua are adopted children of Korean birth (and different parentage). Something is said of their arrival--the most engaging picture shows the boys, now ten and eleven, with the clothes they were wearing then. We hear, too, that Eric wonders about his Korean mother: ""Why did she give him up?"" ""If she were to come to this country, would she recognize him?""--questions ""that simply cannot be answered."" They sometimes fight, and Eric says to Joshua ""You're not my brother."" When he was younger, and heard that he didn't grow inside his adoptive mother, he became upset. With these various pieces of information (some applicable to adoptees generally), Sobol tries to suggest some of the discomfitures of adopted Asian children--along with depicting them at play and as ""part of a loving family."" There is only the barest, ambiguous suggestion of why the Levins adopted them, however (""We needed to raise children. . .""), and no reference of any kind to why ""many Asian children have been adopted by American families."" Add pictures that mostly look posed, and this is the merest introduction to the topic--inferior to Maxine Rosenberg's Being Adopted (J-20) as regards both transracial adoptions and the problems of differentness.

Pub Date: April 20, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Coward-McCann

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION