Want to prepare yourself and your child as you think about heritage travel.  Here are some top recommendations: 

Heritage Trip Books

From Home to Homeland: What Adoptive Families Need to Know Before making a Return Trip to China,   Edited by D. Jacobs, I. Ponte & L. Wang.

• This is the definitive and ideal guide for any family contemplating making a return birth country visit.  It has compilations from parents and adopted children alike, and all journeys were not ideal, but offer many learning insights.  This resource also includes several professional insights and is the “classic” for adoptive parents on the edge of planning a return visit.

Wuhu Diary: On Taking My Adopted Daughter Back to Her Hometown in China by Emily Prager

• This is an account of a return trip Prager made with LuLu, her five-year-old daughter, in an effort to reintroduce LuLu to her roots.  They spend an extended time and go beyond the typical tourist locales as they visit nursery schools and amusement parks.

When You Were Born in China: A Memory Book for Children Adopted from China, by Sara Dorow and Stephen Wunrow

• It covers various conversational techniques and guidelines for discussions over the adoptees' birth country-China. Strong visual photographs enhance the level of enjoyment and imagination during the explorations of adopted children's initial cultural heritages.

Kids Like Me In China, by Ying Ying Fry and Amy Klatzkin

• Written from the perspective of an adopted Chinese girl, this book is an overview of her experiences, in which many adoption aspects that adults often struggle to explain are included.

If the World Were a Village:  A Book About the World’s People, by David Smith and Shelagh Armstrong

• This clever idea is created in this book that reduces the world population of approximately six billion to a more manageable one hundred.  This allows the reader context to understand crucial statistics for comparison and understanding.   This is a delightful resource to help kids and adults understand each of our own unique place that we occupy within the world.