Mishka: An Adoption Tale

Many blogs have a listing of what the author has been reading. My blog has no such list, but if it did my list would be dominated by children's books. Jason Alexei loves to read and hear stories. He has some books I like better than others. Here is a post about a couple adoption related books that are two of our favorites.

One of my favorite books on my non-existent list is Nikolai, The Only Bear. It is a great adoption story about a bear named Nikolai who lives in an orphanage. No one at the orphanage understands Nikolai and his growling bear talk until a furry faced man and his wife come to visit him. This man and woman know how to speak bear fluently and they take Nikolai home to America to be his parents.

We had a very similar situation in Vidnoye when we visited Jason Alexei on our second trip. At one point he started speaking bear to us and for months afterward he was our growling bear. This started immediately after our translator called him a "strong Russian bear". We learned the Russian word for little bear is "Mishka". Out of all our adoption experiences, hearing Jason growl like a Mishka was my favorite. A post from last year documents the experience a little more. Click on this highlighted text for the full story.

I mention this old story again because there is a new book with a similar theme. It is called Mishka, An Adoption Tale. I bought it as soon as I heard about it and can not recommend it more.

The story begins with a pot-bellied stuffed bear named Mo. Mo lives a lonely life on the shelf of an airport gift shop, watching the people go back and forth until one day a man and woman purchase him. They all board an airplane together and fly a long, long, time to a very cold land.

The man and woman take Mo to a boy named Yuri. When Yuri sees Mo, he calls him "Mishka". The four of them spend a wonderful day together, but at the end of the day the man and woman have to leave. Mo stays behind with Yuri to keep him company.

For a long time, Mo and Yuri live together with a dozen other children waiting for the nice man and woman to return. Mo likes living with Yuri better than when he lived at the airport, but he misses the nice man and woman. When spring arrives, so do the man and woman. They and Yuri and Mo all go home together. In the end everyone learns what Yuri means when he says "Mishka."

It really is a great book that accurately captures the in-country adoption process. Language differences between the parents and older adoptive children are realistically portrayed. The book effectively captures the separation that occurs between the adoption trips, something that we are currently enduring while we wait to go back to visit Grace. I especially liked the scenes of the four of them (Mo is definitely a part of the family) driving through Moscow and spending time at the US Embassy. I recommend it to any one who has adopted from Russia, whether it was the adoption of a boy or a growling bear.

Jason Alexei loves the book. We read it all the time. I love it, too. My favorite part is the title character Mo, aka "Mishka". The character in the book is a great connection to our own adoption. I did not mention it in the post last year, but after Jason's growling scenes at the orphanage last year we called him "Mishka" for a while. Russian men typically have about a half-dozen nicknames so one more for Jason Alexei did not really matter at the time.

It was a nickname that did not stick after he left Russia, but whenever I hear the word Mishka, I think back to the day we first learned our boy spoke bear. Just like Nikolai and just like Mo.