“It’s Okay to Wonder” & “Braver Than Me”

By Rhonda Wagner, Illustrated by Jim Lutz

Lucid Books, 2019 & 2020, ISBN: 978-1-63296-343-7, 34 pages, $12.99

Learning to share your parents can be difficult for children when their parents decide to become foster parents. “It’s Okay to Wonder” explores those feelings from the perspective of a child, Avery waiting for her new foster sibling to join the family. It was refreshing to read a book from this perspective and it touched on important feelings children often have about how their lives will change when a new child joins the family. The book was written by Rhonda Wagner after her daughter’s family decided to become foster parents and Wagner became a foster grandma.

The book explains parts of the licensing process, birth order, rules and preparations a foster family must make, reunification goals, roles of extended family members and much more. The author has broken out several conversation starters at the end of the book that allows for families to have discussions with their children after reading the book.

Wagner’s second book, “Braver Than Me” continues following Avery as her family welcomes a new child into their family. This book also explores the perspective of the biological child of a foster family and some of the mixed feelings and emotions that take place for those children, including when reunification takes place.

Both of these books are really great for families to read with their children when they’re in the foster parent licensing process. It allows families to have an easy entry into what can be difficult conversations about adding children to the family through fostering. Definitely great books for the family book shelf.

— Reviewed by Kim Phagan-Hansel

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