With an inspiring drive to share her story, Penn State alumna Iris Keen is taking the children’s book world by storm.
Keen graduated from Penn State in 2013 and has since spent time working and living all along the east coast. However, her most important journey started when she was just an infant.
Keen was born in Seoul, Korea, and adopted by her parents when she was 6 months old. Keen’s brother, Casey, was also adopted from Korea when he was the same age. But the sister-brother duo were the only adopted children each other knew during their childhoods.
“I was the only one, besides my brother, of course, growing up who I knew that was adopted. It was a diverse town. But in terms of adoption and things like that, it wasn’t something everyone was talking about,” Keen said. “I also think that back in the last 90s, adoption wasn’t as prevalent as it is now. I think now adoption is talked about a lot more in terms of people adopting, with celebrities and such, and it’
AT the end of this month Jamie will have been with me for a whole year so I feel that a celebration is in order. He arrived on the last day of February 2020 which, being a leap year, was Saturday the 29th. So this year his ‘Happy Gotcha Day’ will have to be celebrated on the 28th. Doing a little on-line research I was surprised to discover that a ‘Gotcha Day’ is actually a real celebration – so we shall definitely be having one at our spot! He was just seven months old when he arrived. He was still only a puppy and a puppy that had seen very little of the outside world. At home we discovered that he didn’t like to be left in a room by himself and so he would push himself forcefully passed my legs whenever I opened a door. We also discovered that he didn’t really like to eat dog food, he definitely didn’t like going out into the garden on his own (unless he had stolen something and was trying to run away!). He didn’t like to be stroked, brushed or touched, espec