By Keiko Kasza
A little yellow bird goes looking for a mother who looks like him, and gets found instead by a bear who looks nothing like him at all.
Choco is a small yellow bird with no mother, and he decides to go find one. He tries Mrs. Giraffe, because she is yellow, but she has no wings. He tries Mrs. Penguin, because she has wings, but she has no big round cheeks. He tries Mrs. Walrus, because she has big round cheeks, but she can't dance the way a mother should. By now Choco is crying. Then along comes Mrs. Bear, who is brown and enormous and looks nothing like him, and instead of asking whether she matches, she asks what a mother would do if she were his mother. She hugs him. She kisses him. She dances with him. And then she takes him home to meet the rest of her children, who are a hippo, an alligator, and a pig, and who are baking an apple pie.
This is the one to use with the youngest child on the shelf, because it never says the word adoption and never needs to. It works on a four-year-old's exact logic: a mother should look like me, obviously. Then it takes that logic apart with a bear who reframes the question from what do you look like to what do you need. A child who does not resemble their family recognizes Choco's search instantly, and the ending, a household of mismatched siblings and a pie, is the answer with no explaining attached. Kasza's pictures are broad and funny, so the crying stretch never gets heavy.