Lena & Ruby: A Story of Two Adoptions

by Mary Qamaniq-Mason, Kevin Qamaniq-Mason, Marcus Cutler (Illustrator)

Discover the respected traditional practice of Inuit custom adoption through the story of two young girls each growing up with their adoptive families.
Lena and Ruby are best friends. They love to have sleepovers, bake cookies, and make up dance routines. They are also both adopted. Learn about how the two girls met as they talk about their own unique adoption experiences, including Inuit custom adoption and transracial adoption.

Genres: Picture Books, Adoption, Family

24 pages, Hardcover

Published May 10, 2022

Reviews

[Theediscerning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intended solely for certain communities, this is still a very important book for them. It's a little too geared towards the point and purpose of it, as opposed to allowing entertainment to slip in, but it still covers what it wants to cover well. And what that is is adaption – both the custom adoption practised by Inuit peoples, where parties just agree that a child will be raised by an adult couple not related to the child, and the standard, western adoption. So here is a child brought up under custom adoption, and one adopted by "southerners", who struggles with lack of fellow Inuits as company, and never gets to recognise herself as a result. Luckily the two become best friends, and we see the parity in both systems. I need no convincing that this book, when shown to a child struggling with her or his status as an adopted child, will come away feeling much better about things; the benefits of this are blindingly obvious.

[Andréa]

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book from the publisher through Edelweiss.