Getting a school assignment to make a family tree can be very stressful for adopted kids, as they usually don't know the identity of members of their birth clan.I decided to write I’m Still Me for teenagers because so little of the literature is addressed to their needs. The plot is framed by the infamous school assignment to fill in a family tree.
Getting a school assignment to make a family tree can be very stressful for adopted kids, as they usually don't know the identity of members of their birth clan.
In my young adult novel, Lori Elkins is in high school when her history teacher gives her class the family tree assignment: they are to interview their parents and relatives about their family history. Lori is not the only one in for a stressful time. Her best friend will discover that her deceased father killed himself, and other classmates learn things about their families that had been withheld from them.
Lori realizes that she has to search for her birth mother in order to fill in her tree. Even with her adoptive parents' permission, she is scared: will she be the same person once she meets this lost mother? The search isn't easy, but after Lori talks with her birth mother and shares what she has learned with her adoptive parents, she realizes that she hasn't changed. She is relieved to find, as I was after finding my birth mother, that she is still the same person as before.
It may sound weird to say that your whole life changed because of an American history assignment. But that’s the way it was.
If Mom and Dad had known what was going to happen that day, they would have gone to the principal and demanded a curriculum change. Or that Mr. Innskeep be fired. Or they would have pulled me out of school. Because at that time there were certain things that we just didn’t talk about in our house – and one of them was where my younger brother Mike and I come from.
All of which is a way of saying I’m adopted – which until recently I never said at all. It was a secret that I kept in a private place inside me. It didn’t bother me because I never thought about it – much. And I might not have thought about it this year if it hadn’t been for Mr Innskeep’s history project.