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Forever Fingerprints: An Amazing Discovery for Adopted Children ISBN: 9781849057783
Eldridge, Sherrie and Williams, Rob
Published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2014
Lucie is tremendously excited because Uncle John and Aunt Grace are coming for a visit. She wants to look like a princess for them, but when she goes flying out to the car to give them big hugs, she discovers that Aunt Grace has a big fat tummy! What is going on! Uncle John whispers that a baby is coming, and this is really exciting news. When she gets to feel Aunt Grace's tummy, she can feel the baby tapping inside, and she begins to wonder what the baby does in there. Can it eat, or sleep, or pooh? The next day she and her friend make fingerprint pictures with a stamp pad and paper, and she makes her picture into Aunt Grace's baby, giving it a head and arms and legs. All of this begins to mull over in Lucie's mind, and that night she thinks about why her birth parents didn't keep her. This is an upsetting thought, and she is sad and screams for her parents. There are cuddles then and mum sings to her and rocks her. Dad tells her about how babies are made inside the mummy all safe and snug, and this is a lovely idea that makes Lucie giggle. She likes to think of her birth mother and father and would like to meet them, and find out all the ways she may be like them,but her parents have to tell her that they don't know 'what they were like or how to find them'. This makes Lucie sad again, and her parents with her. Then her dad comes up with a lovely idea. Lucie's fingerprints are hers and hers alone. No one else on earth has the same fingerprints, and these developed when she was inside her birth mother. This is a connection they will always have, and something she will always share with the mother she cannot know. This makes Lucie happy again, and she goes to sleep with her fingers 'tucked close to her heart'. The illustrations in this remarkable picture book are very interesting. We see only hands and feet and the bottom halves of people's bodies; at the end of the story there is a circle of hands - two sets of which are black and two white, the fifth set is clearly mixed race - a fact that has not been clear before. A fascinating book with a unique viewpoint. Available form Amazon, good book shops, and the publisher at: www.jkp.com
Age: 5+