BABIES COME FROM AIRPORTS

A celebration of a multiracial family formed through international adoption.

First-person, rhyming text in the voice of Adar, a black adoptee from Ethiopia (as indicated by a flag on his “Gotcha Day” scrapbook), shares his anticipation of his mother’s arrival at the airport with his new baby sister, while Adar’s big brother, Nico, helps him recall his own arrival at the airport with their mother. A cartoon aesthetic incorporates environmental print and other details to reveal that this baby girl was born in China. The text doesn’t share whether Nico is an adoptee; he has light-brown skin and dark, straight hair, while their mother has a similar skin tone and brown, curly hair. Their father’s light skin and curly, dark-blond hair make him seem white. He’s depicted as a rather hapless parent, with various mishaps recorded by the boys’ pictures drawn for their mother during her absence. While their reunion with mother and baby is a joyful one at the airport, the central premise that “babies come from airports” erases birth parents in the adoption triad. This grave misstep frames adoption as a wholly joyful phenomenon of adoptive parents and kids in a mutual, exclusive “gotcha,” thus ignoring its inherent losses and complexities.

While some families may “come from” adoption, babies simply do not come from airports.