Emma's Story

When Emma sets out to make a cookie family with her Grandma, the happy afternoon suddenly turns sad. The cookies are meant to look like her family, but hers is the only one with licorice hair and eyes. She doesn’t look like the others; does that mean she doesn’t belong?

In gentle text, Deborah Hodge tells the story of one small girl’s adoption: the hopes and prayers of her Canadian parents, their trip to the other side of the world, their meeting with the new baby, and the very long ride home to the new family waiting for Emma

Thousands of baby girls from China have been adopted by North American families. Although this lovely book tells the story of one such little girl, it is about much more than the logistics of adoption. It is about the many ways in which we can come together to form a family.

Publishers Weekly

Skillful paintings help offset a tepid narrative in this latest addition to the growing collection of foreign adoption tales. Hodge, a Canadian author of children's nonfiction, introduces Emma, who's upset to realize she looks different from her family. Grandma nestles with her in a cozy floral armchair, an Asian folding screen in the background, and recounts how Emma's parents traveled to China to adopt a longed-for daughter. The lengthy, linear narration, with its familiar adages ("It's not how we look that makes us a family.... It's how we love each other"), is buoyed by realistic, detailed illustrations. Zhang (A Little Tiger in the Chinese Night) employs a myriad of textures and motifs in blankets, wallpaper and clothing in his compositions, most of them approached from a frontal perspective, like photographs in a family album. The layout balances text and art neatly, allotting the illustrations about four-fifths of the spread and boxing the text within a spacious column that is decorated with a motif from the facing art. All told, however, this lacks the emotional charge of such similarly themed works as Rose Lewis and Jane Dyer's I Love You Like Crazy Cakes or the accessibility of Kes Gray and Mary McQuillan's Our Twitchy (Children's Forecasts, Oct. 20). Ages 4-8. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Deborah Hodge is an award-winning author of many books for children. Emma Comes Home is her first work of fiction. She is a former elementary school teacher and curriculum writer, editor, and instructional designer for the British Columbia Ministry of Education. Deborah Hodge lives in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Song Nan Zhang was born in Shanghai, China and studied at China’s leading art college, the Beijing Central Institute of Fine Arts. He also studied at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Song Nan Zhang has illustrated several books for Tundra. He now lives with his wife in Montreal.