It's book review week here at the Russian Adoption blog. Why, you ask? Because we're moving this week, I answer, and I've had to do all my blogs ahead of time. Thinking of a whole bunch of pithy topics in 2 short days isn't easy so I've decided to talk about the children's books about adoption that we have around the house.

Nikolai the Only Bear is by Barbara Joose and illustrated by Renata Liwska. This was the very first children's book about adoption from Russia on the market. I think it came out about a year ago, in March. It's about Nikolai, the only bear at orphanage #1 in Novosibirsk, where there are "99 keepers and one hundred orphans. And Nikolai is the only bear."

Okay. Do you see a problem right there? "Keepers"? Not to mention 99 of them?

But let's go on with the story. Nikolai lives and plays with the other orphans but there's one problem: because he's a bear he only speaks bear. He's also a little aggressive and he can't sing. This causes some issues for him. He's also un-adoptable, being a bear and all. The other orphans "come and go" but Nikolai is stuck in the orphanage. The orphanage director writes to America to find him a family.

A couple comes and lo and behold! they seem to speak bear. Or at least bear sign-language. They paw at the air and growl a little bit and la la la Nikolai has found his family at last.

Okey dokey. I have read what Barbara Joose has said about this story and why she wrote it. Her studio mate has an adopted grandson from Novisibirsk and she met the child at a party. She was intrigued about his beginnings. As a writer I appreciate this. Inspiration can be everywhere. But I also want to put something out there: if you're going to write a story about adoption, it's best to be a person involved in adoption intimately. And if that's not the case, have your story vetted by as many adoptive parents/children/relatives as you possibly can. Because Nikolai the Only Bear is a little offensive to some people, and that could have been avoided.

Here's why this story isn't quite right. One is the whole "keepers" thing. People associate keepers with the zoo. Second, the fact that there are 99 of them! What kind of orphanage has a 1-1 ratio? I don't think she had to say they were deprived and malnourished and miserable, but please - 99 orphanage workers? This is fairy tale land. I also don't get why Nikolai had to be a bear. On her website Joose said it was because the little boy she met acted like a bear sometime, but all it does in the story is confuse the reader. If Nikolai is the stand-in for the child adopted from Russia to America, what does it say that he's weird and different? Why do the other kids get to come and go and poor Nikolai has to leave the country for anyone to love him?

I don't know. It's easy to criticize a book, but at the same time this book was the first on the market about our kids...and it does them somewhat of a disservice. It's also the one most likely to be purchased by a library because its publishing company is Simon and Schuster, and my book's pub. co. is tiny. Borya and the Burps, another Russian adoption book (to be reviewed later this week) is a great book but it also comes from a smaller publishing company.

Sigh.

My recommendation: check this book out of the library and see if it's the kind of thing you want your kids to read about their beginnings.