A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kasza

This is a picture book about a little bird named Choco who is trying to find his mother. He goes around asking  various animals if they are his mother and they say no because they don't have certain features he has, like no wings or no round cheeks etc. Eventually he becomes sad and starts to cry. Mrs. Bear comes and finds out why he's crying and asks him if she could be his mother, eventhough she doesn't look anything like him. She takes Choco home to her other children who are all different types of baby animals. And the story ends with line "and Choco is very happy that his new mommy looked just the way she did".

The social issue this book address is adoption.  I like how it conveys an important message in a simple way that is easy both enjoyable for young children to read and easy to understand.  The main message being that Mrs. Bear doesn't have to look the same as Choco to be his mother it just matters that she cares for Choco as a mother would.  I think the clarity of book's message makes it easy and almost natural to start discussion after reading it about  adoption and the general concept of what makes a family.

Something I found interesting is how throughout most of the book is Choco asking around for his mother but when he meets Mrs. Bear, she asks him instead.  I feel like this subtely shows the importance of adoptive parents allowing room for the children to accept them as their parents.  Also I was smiling at the ending because I guessed that her children at home would not bears but other types of animals.

This book was also personally interesting to me because I do not look like my mom in terms of skin and hair color because my mom is Caucasion and my dad is African American.  So I could relate to the book in some ways because of this. I wonder how I would have reacted to this book if I had read it when I was young.  From what I remember though I didn't think/care about the differences in parents race they were just mom and dad.
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