The Perfect Match: A Story About Foster Care, Family, and Adoption

This picture book should be viewed as a learning/teaching tool with a directive towards the reality of children living in foster care placement, and wishing for a family of their own. The text has been simplified to target a younger aged population, leaving room for discussion with a child and appropriate adult. The illustrations represent a variety of families/lifestyles, with attention to diversity. Potentially interactive association with text and "feeling hearts", incorporate feelings with pictorial cues and the written word, for reader interpretation, and developmental consideration. "Feeling hearts" reveal the emotional differences in the family types portrayed. Various levels of feelings are captured in this visual perception for the young reader, which heightens and expands the learning results. Sensitivity and respect underlie the plight of lost innocence, and the ending reveals a wished for and hopeful attainment of one child's "PERFECT MATCH", through adoption, and in her heart.