"Take Me with You," by Carolyn Marsden is about two 10 year-old girls in an orphanage run by nuns in post-WW II Italy. It's a difficult life and all the girls really want to get adopted, but Susanna doesn't have much hope because she is a mulata - her father was an African-American GI - and Guisepina's real mother hasn't given permission for her to be adopted, even though she doesn't want her.
But then Susanna's father reappears - her mother is long dead, and he hadn't known that he'd fathered a child - and there ensues a long period of their getting to know each other and overcoming their language difference, while Pina, after much effort that has to be kept secret from the nuns, finally finds her mother and persuades her to give permission for Pina to be adopted, although by the end of the story, that hasn't happened yet.
A short and fast-reading book - and as I recall, stories about orphans and orphanages have a fascination for children, even (or perhaps especially) those in two-parent secure homes.
But then Susanna's father reappears - her mother is long dead, and he hadn't known that he'd fathered a child - and there ensues a long period of their getting to know each other and overcoming their language difference, while Pina, after much effort that has to be kept secret from the nuns, finally finds her mother and persuades her to give permission for Pina to be adopted, although by the end of the story, that hasn't happened yet.
A short and fast-reading book - and as I recall, stories about orphans and orphanages have a fascination for children, even (or perhaps especially) those in two-parent secure homes.
