By Marianne Richmond
A little bear named Barley sits in his mama's lap and asks her the questions adopted children ask, one at a time.
Barley and his Mama are curled up in their cuddle spot under a tree, and Barley starts asking. Did I grow in your tummy? No. Then whose tummy did I grow in? Your birth mother's. Why didn't she keep me? Because she knew she couldn't be the mama she wanted to be, and she loved you enough to wish for a family who could. Will you ever give me away? No. Then Mama tells him her side: how she wished and wished and asked God for the child who would be just right for her, how long she waited, how she pictured him before she ever saw him, and how he turned out to be exactly the wish she'd made. Marianne Richmond's watercolors are soft and round, and the whole book stays in that one spot under the tree, question, answer, question, answer, until Barley runs out of questions.
Barley asks the four questions in the order adopted children tend to ask them, and none of them get dodged. A child says out loud, why didn't my birth mother keep me, and gets an answer; then asks, are you going to do that too, and gets an answer to that one as well. That second question is the one a lot of picture books skip, and it may be the one sitting under everything for a child who has been circling it. Richmond keeps Barley and his mama in the cuddle spot the whole time, so the hardest sentences get said while a child is being held. It's specifically for adoptive families, written to answer the questions an adopted child asks rather than to explain adoption in general.