(54) Megan's Birthday Tree

Title: Megan's Birthday Tree: A Story about Open Adoption by Laurie Lears
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Platform: ebook
Pages: 19
Genre: children / adoption / open adoption

Synopsis: Megan is adopted, but she and her parents keep in touch with her birth mother, Kendra. Every year, Kendra decorates the tree she planted when Megan was born and takes a picture of it to send to Megan. Megan cherishes this Birthday Tree, for it ties her and Kendra together. But one day Kendra writes that she is getting married and moving to a different town. Will she forget Megan, without the tree to remind her?

Review: Many adoptee's wonder about their adoption, their past, their birth parents and why they were placed for adoption.  Open adoption helps to answer those questions for families and adopted children by giving them access to their birth parents.  In this story Megan loves looking through the letters she gets from her birth mother and gets excited when she receives a picture every year of her birth mother standing next to a tree she planted when Megan was born.  Megan loves to see the tree grow.  When she learns her birth mother is moving she is scared that her birth mother will forget her.

This story is sweet and honest.  The fears that Megan shares are real and they are handled very well in this story.  In the end Megan's birth mother assures her that she could never forget her that she is very important to her.  Then she shows her that she had dug up the birthday tree to take it to her new home.  This book shows how important open adoption can be to help eliminate children's fears and answer their questions. Nice story that fills the gap in adoption books - this is one of the only ones that really deals with open adoption written for children.