It's spring musical time at the local elementary schools, and that means the classics: Sound of Music, The King and I, Peter Pan, Annie and Oliver! And someone from my household is working hard to audition for a solo in the latter.

What does this have to do with adoption from Russia? Well, every so often, the debate bubbles up on adoption chat boards about whether to allow children who were adopted to watch Annie and Oliver! The first time I saw the threads on this topic, I was stunned at how strong the opinions were, for--and particularly against.

Annie and Oliver! have always been favorites in our house (both the musical versions and the print material on which they are based), and they have proved great springboards for my children to talk about their adoption experiences. "Was my orphanage director mean like Miss Hannigan?" my older son once asked. "Nope," I answered, and I pulled out the picture of his caregiver crying when she kissed him goodbye.

Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist in 1838 as a wake-up call to Victorian England about the appalling conditions in its workhouses. Though Dickens's indictment of the system was searing, it took almost 100 more years for workhouses to be abolished. The book is far, far darker than the musical and film produced in the 1960s.

Annie is another story. According to Andy Hershberger, registrar at Geppi's Entertainment Museum in Baltimore, the Little Orphan Annie of the original cartoon strip was only in an orphanage for a short time before being adopted by Daddy Warbucks. This Annie earned her stripes fighting all sorts of early twentieth century bad guys like gangsters and Nazis. Sounds like she was much more a power woman than a powerless orphan.

Geppi's Entertainment Museum is a fabulous collection of American pop culture from the late 1700s to the present assembled by Baltimore magazine publisher Steve Geppi. I got to write about it for US Airways' inflight magazine last summer. Andy Hershberger tells me there are dozens of Annie items in the museum, from early bisque nodder figures and sheet music to rings, mugs, badges and even a toothbrush holder. I think I will pay closer attention to them when I am in Baltimore the next time.

And in the meantime, I'll cheer for my soloist.