Holly Marlow
Adoption, Fostering and Special Guardianship
Little Chick couldn’t live with his birth mother, Delly Duck, because she didn’t look after him properly, or keep him safe, so he is surprised to hear that she has laid another egg, and this duckling will be staying with her!
Little Chick has lots of feelings and questions about this confusing situation, which Quill answers to put his mind at ease. This story can be used to gently address some of the questions a care-experienced child may have when their biological mother makes the changes needed to be able to parent another child.
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Support Group
Join “Adoption or Fostering after a Biological Child” (Kinship Carers and Special Guardians also welcome) if you have both adopted and biological children: https://www.facebook.com/groups/adopt/
More about Holly’s books
Delly Duck: Why A Little Chick Couldn’t Stay With His Birth Mother
When Delly Duck lays an egg, she is excited for it to hatch. But she doesn’t really know how to keep an egg safe, or how to look after her chick when he hatches. See how a concerned goose tries to help Delly to learn how to care for her chick, in this touching adoption story.
Delly Duck is available in English, French, German and Spanish on all Amazon sites.
In response to popular demand, Holly Marlow has created a special sibling/twin edition of Delly Duck!
Mr and Mrs Swan build a big nest, so that they have plenty of room to help anyone who needs them. Teach children about different kinds of foster care, with this touching tale of fostering placements leading to kinship care, reunification, adoption and long term foster care / foster-to-adopt. This inclusive story can be used as a therapeutic tool to help care-experienced children to process their experiences, or as an effective teaching aid to normalise and explain foster care and other family structures to all children.
An adoption ceremony – often referred to as a Celebration Hearing, Pronouncement Hearing or Adoption Visit – can be a helpful tool to support therapeutic life story work and to help adopted children to understand what happened when a judge made important decisions about their lives.
This story is designed to show children what to expect at their adoption ceremony and to reassure them that the decision has already been made and will not change at the ceremony. It may be used to explain the purpose of the Celebration Hearing to a child’s friends and classmates, and also serves as a thoughtful gift to help a child to understand and process the ceremony after the fact.
So you’re going to have a cousin who is adopted! Find out what to expect, with this helpful cousin’s guide to adoption, created for cousins just like you!
Cousins by Adoption is available in English and German on all Amazon sites.
Adopting a Little Brother or Sister
So you’re adopting a little brother or sister, huh? Find out what to expect, with this big sister’s guide to adopting a younger sibling! Written from the perspective of a big sister who has adopted a baby brother, this book covers the adoption process, up to the point of the sibling moving in.
So You’ve Adopted a Sibling explores the emotions and changes to routine that children may experience in the early days as a big brother or sister through adoption.
Adoption After a Biological Child
Holly shares an emotional and informative account of the unique challenges and joys of adopting after having a biological child. When Holly and Jon decided to adopt from foster care, they wondered how much having a child already would affect the adoption process, and how the process would affect their daughter. With warmth and vulnerability, Holly shares her personal experiences, delving into the approval and matching process, introductions, attachment issues, therapeutic life story work and contact with her son’s birth family.
