Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

In this story a mother bear explains to her baby bear how he was adopted. The story focuses mostly on the mother's experience and emphasizes how much she longed for a baby and how happy she is to have him. However, most children have questions about their birth parents and need to know they were loved by them. This book doesn't do a great job here. "A mama will grow a baby in her belly, and for all kinds of reasons, she'll decide she cannot be the very best mama she wants to be. The mama who grew you loved you enough to make a different wish." We're okay so far until the wish is defined: "a wish for a family who would love her little one with a total and adoring love, the kind of love I have for you." As if the love the birthmother had was somehow less total and less adoring than the adoptive families' love. The child can only infer that "my birthmother loved me, but not enough." I would rather have seen "She wanted you to grow up in a safe home with a mommy who was ready to be a mommy." Then the message is, "She loved you but she wasn't ready to be a mommy." This message would apply to most situations, whether the problem had to do with poverty or extreme youth or lack of a partner or whatever. In this book the baby was adopted from a "far-away place" so international adoption is implied, which is fine, but if you adopted through foster care or a domestic adoption, it might not fit your situation. I also didn't like the message that "God chose you for me." I think it brings up some disturbing theological ideas. If God chose this child for me, why didn't he cause it to be born to me? I am supposed to believe that the best way to get this baby to me was to cause him to be born to someone else, cause that person all kinds of suffering so they couldn't keep him, then cause the baby the pain of wondering all his life where he came from, just to make ME happy? I believe in God but I don't believe God works like this. Didn't the birthmother ask God for the resources to keep him? Why weren't HER prayers answered? I think we live in an imperfect world and God works within the hearts of people to inspire them to do good. I don't think God creates vast inequities between people and societies in order to satisfy the desires of the fortunate few. I don't think God made a mother in Russia or China poor so she would be forced to put her baby in an orphanage so I could adopt him. Also God supposedly has looked around to pick "the perfect child for me." There is an unspoken pressure here for the child to be perfect. I'd rather think that God is helping me to be the best mother for this child that I can be, instead of God using the child to meet my needs. I read this book to my child, but leave out a lot of it and add my own words. I am looking for a better book.