Borya and the Burps!

An Eastern European Adoption Story

Just for fun, Publisher’s Weekly’s Editors, in compiling their 2/21/2005 Children’s Book Announcements issue, offered ten tongue-in-cheek awards as “Silly Salutations of the Season”. And a winner is… Title Most Apt to Encourage Less-Than-Silent Activity at the Dinner Table: Borya and the Burps: An Eastern European Adoption Story by Jane McNamara, illus. by Dawn Majewski, the story of baby boy with a talent for making magnificent burps. (Perspectives Press)We got a chuckle out of this. Hope you do!

In recent years more children have been adopted from Eastern Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet Bloc countries than from any other region of the world. Yet until now, there have been no picture books designed to tell their stories of finding a forever family through adoption.

Long time social worker Joan McNamara has ably filled that gap with a new children’s book that acknowledges the sense of security and comfort that many children have with the “familiar” in their daily life in an orphanage compared to the unknowns of a new adoptive family. This delightful book gently illustrates some of the confusion children feel when they are removed from the multiple caretakers and groups of children whom they know within their (often deprived) orphanages and are moved into a loving but unfamiliar new family with a sensory-enriched (but possibly overwhelming) home environment. With their whole world turned upside down, children are still able to struggle to make sense of these changes and ultimately blossom within a new family, with a parent or parents who will be theirs forever.

Although Borya and the Burps! is one of the very first books on international adoption from Eastern Europe to be widely available to families, families who have adopted from other regions of the world may find this story valuable as well. Simple comments from parents while reading about what was the same and what was different for their child can personalize this story. Adoption of children from orphanage care does share some common themes and situations in all parts of the world, and thus parents can share this story with their children irregardless of where their child�s orphanage was or will be located.

A good introduction for young, recently arrived children, this unique book will also become an often-used conversation starter for slightly older children ready to talk about their prior lives, their prior caretakers and companions, and what adoption has meant in their young lives.

Borya and the Burps! fills a big hole for families who adopt from Eastern Europe.

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