As a birth, foster, adoptive, and pseudo mom to many children, I know firsthand how hard it is to find quality literature that reflects their experience and gives them skills for their own life journey. As a therapist, certified in trauma and resilience, having spent many years in social services, I also see the lack of resources available to caregivers, teachers, and counselors. It's my passion to help remove shame, build resilience, and reclaim hope in the lives of each member of these families. I’ve done this through a TEDx talk on the power of story on the brain, authored multiple books, speak regularly, offer trainings, and private parent coaching.
I wrote
Speranza's Sweater: A Child's Journey Through Foster Care and Adoption
As a therapist, longtime foster/adoption advocate, and fost/adopt mama, I’m always looking for books that help adults have healthy, child-driven conversations with kids. More than most, kids in foster care and adoptive placements need safe spaces to feel their feelings, navigate life changes, and experience caring adults. Debut author Whitney Bunker brings her personal experiences as a foster/adoptive mama and Executive Director / Co-Founder of City Without Orphans to do just that. We Can Talk About It shows kids that the healthy, supportive adults in their lives are safe places for the questions that will come, while simultaneously modeling for adults how to be that safe place. This book is just one of many beautiful ways Bunker and her organization seek to serve hurting but hopeful families.
Author, adoptive mom, and social worker, Whitney Bunker provides a unique book for the foster and adoptive community. As parents of children from foster care and adoption, you have the privilege to walk alongside them in understanding their story. This book is a guide and on-going conversation starter for families who need support in talking about honest feelings and thoughts surrounding their child’s journey. It guides parents and caregivers through various scenes of familiar expressions of children who have experienced foster care or adoption. As an added support, there are nine parental tips in the back of the book for…
Josh Shipp, a former at-risk foster kid turned youth advocate and TEDx speaker brings us this beautiful mostly autobiographical story of a squirrel who needs a family, but also kinda doesn’t want one. But also does. The quality of fost/adopt books for children has been lacking in the past, but Shipp takes fost/adopt literature to a whole new level with engaging, gorgeous illustrations and the perfect balance of humor and depth. I love that he’s a former foster youth with a mission to help kids find their one caring adult (and for adults to be one!) This is a must-have for any foster or adoptive family’s shelf (and anyone who knows, works with, teaches, counsels, or interacts with children in this situation).
Josh was a squirrel without a squirrel family, so other families tried to take him in. Between the pelicans, the leopards, the otters, the snakes, and many more, no one seemed to want a squirrel like him. Josh didn't want a family, either.
He did everything he could to scare those families away first, but the elephants weren't like other families. The elephants were very large and very patient, and they wanted Josh to be part of their family today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. When Josh takes his plans a little too far and gets into a sticky…
Sandefer, a foster mama herself, wanted to give other foster parents words of comfort to give to their own hurting foster children. Love You From Right Here does just that. Kids in foster care have had so many choices taken from them. I love how this book gives some back. Sandefer has created a place where children can see another child’s agency protected and cared for, where the adult invites (instead of forces) and the child responds when he or she is ready. Sandefer’s story does a beautiful job of illustrating that trust and safety aren’t to be rushed, but developed through patience, kindness, and empathy. Kids and adults need this book.
The Second Edition of Love You From Right Here is a children’s book for children in foster care. Featuring a diverse representation of characters including men, women, boys, and girls, it is written from the perspective of the foster parent to the child in foster care. This book takes you through an abbreviated look at the emotions a young child experiences throughout their transition to a new foster home. The message to the child is that while they are in that home, they will be safe and loved. Love You From Right Here also serves as a keepsake book, with…
While this book isn’t directly about fostering or adopting, it deals with a theme that every foster child, adopted child, birth parent, foster parent, and adoptive parent will experience: attachment. The Invisible String gives kids and their adults language and visuals for framing separation as being held together by an invisible string, always connecting us to the ones we love, regardless of the cause of separation. This book is a wonderful tool for imagining what keeps us connected and helping children to experience their traveling “bond.” This “string” not only plays into their relationships with birth family but new family as well! These kids often develop separation anxiety with new caregivers, and this book gives them a sense of connection while they’re at school, on visits, Sunday school, wherever.
With over 400,000 copies sold, this accessible, bestselling picture book phenomenon about the unbreakable connections between loved ones has healed a generation of readers--children and adults alike--and has been updated with new illustrations and an afterword from the author. Now available in paperback for the first time!
Parents, educators, therapists, and social workers alike have declared The Invisible String the perfect tool for coping with all kinds of separation anxiety, loss, and grief. In this relatable and reassuring contemporary classic, a mother tells her two children that they're all connected by an invisible string. "That's impossible!" the children insist, but…
A Mother for Choco is a classic in the world of adoption books. Told through the lens of a bird looking for his mama, children learn that not all family members look alike! So many foster and adoptive children (and even the children of multi-ethnic birth families!) struggle to identify their place in a family that looks different from them. This story helps to shape the idea that family members can have different hair color, skin color, height, and other varying features from the parents or siblings of the home—and still be family. This is so powerful and important for kids developing their sense of identity and belonging, regardless of their origin.
Family is about love no matter how different parents and children may be, adopted or not.
Choco wishes he had a mother, but who could she be? He sets off to find her, asking all kinds of animals, but he doesn't meet anyone who looks just like him. He doesn't even think of asking Mrs. Bear if she's his mother-but then she starts to do just the things a mommy might do. And when she brings him home, he meets her other children-a piglet, a hippo, and an alligator-and learns that families can come in all shapes and sizes and…
Kids deserve a safe place to live and grow and learn. For some kids, this means living with foster or adoptive parents. Speranza wears her sweater everywhere, hanging onto the last memories of her birth home until it’s threadbare. Like her unraveled sweater, Speranza must weave together a new story, bringing threads from her past and strands from her present, into a future of love, family, and the true meaning of home.
This heart-warming story provides hope and support for the many mixed emotions a child will experience during their foster and adoption journey, through the unraveling and re-weaving of a favorite sweater.Speranza’s Sweater includes a dictionary of words to empower children and their carers by understanding the language used around them.
Since losing his mom, thirteen-year-old Jack Wilson has spent most of his time seeing just how much trouble he can get away with so that he feels like a winner at something. But he takes his mischief too far and is faced with the possibility of unbearable consequences. He knows it’s time to make a big change.
After rediscovering the love of baking he once shared with his mother, Jack is sure that his new sense of purpose will help him stay on the right path, so he throws himself into learning the finer points of sprinkles and scones—and…
After losing his mom, a struggling thirteen-year-old boy in northern Wisconsin rediscovers the love of baking he once shared with her and decides to audition for the world-famous, big-hearted Marvelous Midwest Kids Baking Championship television show in Chicago. Jack is sure that his new sense of purpose will help him stay out of trouble, so he throws himself into learning the finer points of sprinkles and scones -- and hopefully even mending his broken relationship with his dad.
