A reader wrote to ask if I knew of any books for young children that discussed getting a new sibling—but which did not feature a mom and a dad for parents. Great question.

The answer is that (to the best of my knowledge) there is one, And Baby Makes 4 by Judith Benjamin. (Don’t confuse it with the several other books of the same title, or with And Baby Makes More, a great book of essays about queer families and known donors.) It’s self-published book that Benjamin wrote when she, too, could not find an appropriate book for her first grandchild about the pending arrival of a second.

It is very much a story about their family’s own experience, told from the perspective of the older daughter, with photos of their family as the illustrations. It may not fit all families—families adopting a second child, multiracial families, or families with a son, for example—but I think some of the first child’s feelings may be similar. And that’s less a criticism of this specific book than a reason we need more books featuring LGBT families of all types.

Have any of you found books about a new sibling’s arrival that is either inclusive of same-sex or single-parent families, or that focuses on the siblings and puts the parents enough into the background that it might work for more than just mom-dad families? Any good books for children about adopting a sibling?

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