The Adoption

Reviews / Votes

SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL --
Gr 9 Up-When a devastating
earthquake rips through the Peruvian city of Arequipa, the community is left
reeling from massive damage and huge loss of life. A world away in France, a
white family prepares to welcome four-year-old Qinaya, an Aymara earthquake
orphan. Elderly, soon-to-be grandfather Gabriel doesn't know what he's going to
do with a preschooler toddling about, especially since his experiences as a
father were more miss than hit. But the little girl is on her way, and their
world will be forever changed. Little Qinaya is wide-eyed and watchful; her
adoptive parents are sensitive and eager to help her transition, encouraging her
grandparents to spend as much time with her as possible. Watching Gabriel
gruffly stumble into loving sweet, curious Qinaya is delightful. Assumptions are
challenged and shocking revelations are uncovered, showing how complicated
family relations can be beneath the surface. Zidrou and Monin have created a
story that is more than heartwarming; it's heart-scorching and then
heartrending. Though aimed at adults, teens who love crossover works will
appreciate this one; Monin's ability to capture emotion in every facial
expression is pure magic, and the use of vivid watercolor packs a poignant
punch-even city backgrounds are infused with feeling.
VERDICT An aching drama filled with family triumphs
and tensions. For libraries with strong graphic novel
collections. WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS --
Adroitly homing in on small details to convey the bigger picture, the
illustrator transports readers from Gabriel's suburban Belgian neighborhood to
the colonial city of Lima, where, with the help of a private investigator,
Gabriel finds Qinaya. Monin's panels are finely detailed but never too busy,
colors rich but muted with dominant tones of yellow and blue, and with great
attention given to light and shadow. Author Zidrou's plot unfolds almost
entirely in dialogue, through which he masterfully conveys the psychologically
intricate story. And Jeremy Melloul's translation not only renders the French
into English, but also, with the help of Monin's artwork, makes some of the more
obscure Belgian and Peruvian cultural references and practices intelligible for
the American reader. Despite being called The Adoption, this graphic
novel is not really about adoption. It's about family and the love between
parents and children. The climax, communicated in six pages of drawings with
only two lines of dialogue - "It's good!" and "Yeah, it's
good!" - brought tears to my eyes. So, in a way, it was as I feared:
The Adoption is a shameless tearjerker, exploiting tender emotions on the
meaning of family and the ties that bind us together. But by making adoption the
MacGuffin of the story, Zidrou and Monin got their adoption story just
right. PUBLISHER WEEKLY --
Zidrou (Emma G.
Wildford) and Monin tenderly explore a French man's struggle to connect with
his adopted Peruvian granddaughter. Gabriel, a retired butcher, is disgruntled
when his son and daughter-in-law adopt Qinaya, a young native Aymaran girl they
report was orphaned in an earthquake, introducing her to awkwardly cheering (and
sotto voce xenophobic) relatives. ("Qinaya Van Oosterbeek! That's a hell
of a mouthful!") In time, he warms to the child-until it is discovered
that her biological family is alive and searching for her, and that his son and
daughter-in-law kidnapped her. This shock disrupts the cozy fable of unlikely
love built in the book's first half, which then becomes a more complicated and
questioning examination of family ties, longing, and regret. Gabriel, at loose
ends after his son's sudden arrest and incarceration, travels to Peru to see
Qinaya, where he meets another tourist searching for his own daughter who was
lost in the earthquake. Their expeditions are captured with gorgeous views and
late-night ruminations on life choices. Monin's lovely, detailed art captures
crumbling plazas, elderly wrinkles, and goofy office party favors alike with
faithful care. While the premise raises thorny questions about transnational
adoption, it satirizes adoption's "hero narrative" while never quite
upending the notion that love can conquer all. But, this family drama takes
unexpected directions with unusual candor and charm, and its scope in both art
and storytelling will appeal to general readers as well as European comics fans.
(Feb.) BOOKLIST (STARRED) -- "They wanted to start a
family, and now they've destroyed one," Gabriel laments. When that
family-including his closest friends-all gathered for a surprise party for his
seventy-fifth birthday, Gabriel was still a grandfather to beloved Qinaya,
adopted by his son, Alain, and daughter-in-law, Lynette, from Arequipa, Peru,
after a devastating 8.4 earthquake. Gabriel had initially been the most reticent
about the adorable four-year-old, but he quickly became the most attached. And
then the party ends in utter shock: Alain is arrested for kidnapping, and Qinaya
is returned to Peru while the rest of the family falls apart. Gabriel holds on
to two words in Aymaran, his granddaughter's native language: achachi
(grandfather) and qinaya (cloud-ethereal and fleeting). Unmoored and bereft,
Gabriel eventually travels from France to Peru, where he meets a Belgian
stranger who is also seeking someone missing. Somehow, the unlikely pair will
help each other find some semblance of healing. Zidrou's unforgettable narrative
is made utterly spectacular in glorious full color by award-winning artist
Monin. While realistically memorializing the bonds of family-"too much
love"-Zidrou makes plain the fallacies of the great-white-savior complex
especially associated with transnational adoption. Remarkably combining both raw
expose and familial affirmation, and supremely elevated by Monin's
artwork, Zidrou's stupendous narrative-translated into English by Melloul, from
its original French-is a graphic gift to Anglophone readers.