The Littlest Matryoshka is by Corinne Demas Bliss and illustrated by Kathryn Brown. This book is sweet and a little sappy and can easily serve as a metaphor for our children's adoption experiences. It's probably most appropriate for little girls (because it's about sisters) but my little boys like it well enough. If you have matryoshka dolls around it helps the story.

The book is about a family of matryoshka dolls, lovingly created by Nikolai the doll maker in a little village in Russia. They are all sisters: Nina, Nadia, Vanda, Varka, Olga, and Anna. Nina is the littlest.

The dolls travel all the way to a toy shop in American where they're unpacked and set on a shelf. One day a customer with a puffy coat passes by the dolls and knocks little Nina right off the shelf and onto the ground. She is quickly kicked outside the door and covered with snow. The shopkeeper, unaware that the doll is in the snow, shovels the walkway, a snowplow pushes the snow into a pile, and the pile is put into a dumptruck.

Poor little Nina! She's stuck in the snow on a dumptruck. The truck dumps the snow in a pile somewhere outside of town.

Later that day the shopkeeper discovers the missing doll so he packs up the matryoshka and sets it on the sale table. It's discovered by a little girl named Jessie who buys it at half price.

Jessie takes the dolls home and sets them by the window so they can look out at the snow.

Meanwhile, the snow starts to thaw and Nina get carried into a stream and then down a waterfall and is almost eaten by a heron. She eventually gets stuck in some leaves by the shore. It's rather poignant. She looks at the moon and is reminded of her sisters' round faces.

In the morning a squirrel picks her up and sticks her in his nest but she rolls out onto the ground...only to be discovered by a little girl...

who happens to be Jessie!

Yay! Reunited! Happy day!

There's a nifty little website devoted to the book, too, where you can learn about matryoshka dolls and do coloring pages, etc. Click here for that.