Carolyn Haywood books are sure to be enjoyable! A delightful story about an adopted boy and his friend and their adventures. Plus a happy ending for an orphan child who he meets. Heart tugs, but good.

My 5 yo daughter really enjoyed this book and asked to read it everyday until we were done. :)
ETA: My 5 yo son also loved this book when I read it to him!

Read this aloud with my kids 7,5,4. They loved it so much!

I asked the kids what their favorite part of this one was…their answer: “the last page!” So, there’s that.

HIGHLY recommend reading this to your kids. It was a great way to have conversations about adoption.

The kids really liked this, but the parts about how adoption happens are really sketchy and should be discussed.

I’ve read this book once before to my children and I really didn’t care for it. This time I read it the part about adopting little boys had me crying while reading. And it hit the kids a different way as well.

I'd give Here's a Penny a 3 and my daughter would give it a 5, so I'll average it out to a 4.

A sweet, older read aloud I enjoyed with my kids.

My girls enjoyed this book. :-)

I decided to pre-read this book before reading it to my kids, and overall I thought it was cute and often funny, though definitely from a "simpler time," (the 40s) which I think in some cases will require some explanations for kids now. On the one hand, it is nice to see the subject of adoption handled in a children's book, including a very tender moment in which Penny (the main character) is reassured that he is "really truly" his parents' son, no matter what another teasing child may say. There were also some amusing stories of "sticky situations" and daily mayhem that I'm sure families will enjoy reading together.

On the other hand, this was written in a different time, and a few things put up some small red flags for me. I have no personal experience with adoption, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but the way Penny's parents described his adoption rubbed me the wrong way. I have no doubt they love him, but they told him they decided before they met him that they wanted to adopt a child with red hair and freckles, so that's how they knew he was "the one" when they went down to the hospital to look over the available babies. It almost made the adoption process sound like picking out a pet, which is echoed later when Penny decides ahead of time exactly what he wants his cat to look like. I like that he kept the stray cat he found even though it wasn't "perfect," but he still got his "perfect" cat too.

Update: Read this to the three kids, and they mostly liked it. It is definitely a 40s/50s kind of story where everything works out in the end and the protagonist always wins, which might not be for everyone.

We liked this book. It felt like you were watching an old black and white sitcom like Leave it to Beaver. Since it was about a little boy living out his little boy days my youngest son even enjoyed listening in.

Timeless children’s book that brought me to tears multiple times. Such a beautiful story of adoption and acceptance.