A young girl named Ada, who is adopted, worries about how she will do a family tree project for school. The book starts when Ada brings home a drawing of a tree from her teacher. She sees the assignment on it and “her face fell.” Her mom and dad’s faces likewise fell, but her mom has the idea of speaking with a neighbor who had “a similar problem.”
The neighbor is a single mom and her daughter, who was a “What-If baby.” The mother gently explains, “She means IVF.” The daughter explains that she drew a wild rose, “My mom is the strong climbing vine, and everyone else that helped—like a father or something—they’re part of the root system.” The creative solution is notable, though “donor” would have been better than “father or something.”
Ada’s mother then takes her to see Ada’s former foster parents, Tess and her daughter Bessie. Ada meets two boys who seem to be Tess and Bessie’s new foster children, who observe that Ada must be their foster sister. They ask to be in her family tree, and draw themselves as islands next to it—an “atoll” of connected islands, even though they look separated.
Ada goes next to see her two uncles and their son Leo, who explains about Ellen, his “Sure is great,” (surrogate), and his Auntie Mika, one uncle’s sister, who donated an egg for Leo. Leo draws them in as “rivers that empty into the ocean of ME.”
Ada visits her friend Maev, who draws tunnels to represent the tunnels she wished she had between her two parents’ homes. Ada and her mom then visit Ada’s little sister, who was adopted by other parents, a two-mom couple. Ada worries there’s no place for them in her tree, but the family figures out how to include them as flowers in a growing landscape.
Ada then adds more islands to represent other foster brothers and sisters she had lived with before she was adopted. She adds her teacher, who had drawn the tree. At her dad’s suggestion, she draws herself and her parents as stars in the sky. She then wonders where to put her birth mother, Sochi, and asks her parents, “Why didn’t Sochi keep me? What did I do?” Her parents explain that she didn’t do anything, but that Sochi loves her and wants her to be taken care of. They suggest she draw Sochi as a moon in the sky, “always there, even if you don’t always see it.”
In the end, Ada doesn’t just have a family tree; she has “a whole world.” The final page has flaps that lift up to give it even greater impact.
I love the creative ways of including different family members here, particularly the network of foster siblings and parents which is often overlooked. The execution feels somewhat confusing in places, however. We don’t actually learn that Ada is adopted until we meet her former foster parents several scenes in, so readers may be initially puzzled about why she finds the assignment hard. Even then, we don’t know that she was adopted by her current parents; for all we know, they could be foster parents, too—until Ada says in a later scene that she was adopted. Grown-ups may need to explain, too, how Ada and her sister came to have two different sets of parents, as that is never fully clarified. Perhaps this gradual unfolding of her family ties was deliberate, but I worry young readers may not quite follow. And in the final scene with Ada’s parents, it is never indicated which parent is speaking.
Also, when Ada adds in her former foster brothers and sisters, “She couldn’t remember their names so she made them up.” I understand that some children, particularly those who have been in group homes, may not remember the names of all their foster siblings, but it feels wrong to imply, as the text does here, that she doesn’t remember any of them. Additionally, while a reference to “foster brothers and sisters” might be accurate for some children, “foster siblings” would have left room for the possibility that some are nonbinary.
Still, this book offers a positive take on the many intertwining ways that families form and grow today, and (especially with a little adult explanation) will be a positive addition to bookshelves.
Ada and her parents are White, but other people in her family are of various racial/ethnic identities. Bessie and Tess wear hijabs, indicating religious diversity as well.
See also My Family Tree Has Roots for another take on a similar situation.
