Adoption Books

Having been a foster parent for a year and now pursuing an international adoption, I have come to appreciate the value of having a strong support system when embarking upon this new journey. It is my desire to also be a support to others who are starting this process and I've wondered where in the world I would begin to find information on how to go about that. This book is the place!

Each section is dedicated to a different aspect of support and gives many practical ideas for those desiring to start their own support team. At the end of every segment, there is also a worksheet that asks questions to help you get started. Whether you want to start out small with a resource library (as the author's group did) or you desire a multi-faceted approach for your church, I would highly recommend this book for inspiration and creative ideas. There is also a list of helpful resources and websites in the back of the book to further you along in your journey.

This is a quick read, a highly practical and useful tool for any who may be interested in starting their own support network.

This book has been an answered prayer! My husband and I have created a non-profit organization that offers financial grants to adoptive families. As we are in the early stages of setting up our organization, this book was extremely helpful in guiding us towards our goals. This book is very informative and a must have for anyone interested in adoption or adoption ministries.

Having been involved in adoptions and adoption groups for a long time, being a former adoption social worker and an adoptive mother of 2 daughters from China, I can not recommend this book highly enough. The Adoption Network: Your Guide to Starting a Support System, by Laura Christianson, is a must read for anyone interested in adoption. Her extensive background and expertise in adoptions becomes obvious in the topics that are covered and the detail that she includes. This book is written in a very organized and concise manner, with an easy to follow format. In addition to discussing the needs for, and the types of, adoption group support networks, the author covers in great detail all of the steps needed to start your own adoption support network. She includes step by step information in areas such as targeting the audience for a support network, soliciting support, planning a budget, and recruiting leadership. She then details other important components for adoption support networks such as building a resource library, developing a mentoring program, developing online connections, social events and workshops. She further includes information on training church leaders, educating the faith community and how to publicize your adoption network. The appendix is filled with resources for lauching an adoption support network and internet resources for further research and education. The author has also included handy checklists and worksheets that make the guide so simple to use and follow. All the information you will ever need is laid out step by step in a clear, easy to follow format that anyone can use successfully. This handy guide is simple enough that any layperson or adoptive parent either within or outside of the church community could easily set up their own support network. Are you an adoptive parent feeling isolated with no readily available supports? Get this book and start your own support group. Are you a member of a church who is sensitive to providing support for adoptive parents and encouragement for adoption? This book is all you will need to provide that support network. Are you part of a parent's or children's group that would like to include support for adoptive families in your community? Get this guide. After reading this book, which is also especially motivating, you will be ready to run right out and start your own support group immediately.

As the former leader of an emotional support group, this is the book I recommended for people to use in conducting a search. Mary Jo has been involved in adoption searches long enough that she knows how to overcome the many difficulties. Some searches today go very fast, but this book will also help those people who are having a harder time at completing their search. Mary Jo understand the emotions of searching because she is one of "us."

Read Mary Jo's book, join a search and support group, and don't hire the typical private investigator. Searching is part of the healing process!

I used this book when I searched for my son in 1989 and was struck by not only how thorough Mary Jo is in sharing ideas, techniques and sample letters and forms; but also the emotional part of the search journey. It is crucial to go into these searches with our eyes wide open and understand all possible issues the person we seek might have, as well as our own feelings. We also have a responsibility to be discrete and sensitive when we search for our lost parents or children.

Mary Jo is both a natural Mother and an Adoptee. I think this is why she totally gets it as to our unique issues. Most of the available search books are written by detectives or other people who have no understanding of the enormous emotional impact search and reunion have. If I was recommending only one adoption search book - this would be the one!

This book was a godsend! Wanted to find my family and didn't know where to start. This book did the trick. It took me through the process of gathering documents and information step-by-step. Now I'm going to buy The Reunion Book.

It's weird rooting for a guy you ought to hate because of what he does, but that's what I ended up doing with this book about a future so near that some of it is already happening. People I know are having a hard time having children and adoptions are getting harder and harder, they way they are in this book. The government is already clamping down on a lot of things and if we can microchip pets to keep them from being stolen, why not kids? Reed's sort-of hero Tom Starbird steals babies for sale to rich clients, but he has reasons. Then he steals a baby from the wrong girl and the real trouble starts. This starts a cat-and-mouse game that makes this novel a fast, really scary read.

This woman never fails to amaze me. She is able to do speculative fiction with so much immediacy -- and hence, more suspence and menace -- creating worlds that contain classic science-fiction-y elements, and yet are so recognizably our own, for tales that are a veritable punch to the gut.

This book reminds me of all that was excellent about "The Children of Men" by P.D. James. In short: in a period in our not so distant future when a shortage of babies and a preponderance of fertility issues make children a rare commodity, Tom Starbird is the Baby Merchant, an indivudual who's taken it upon himself to remove infants from what he deems unsuitable environments with unfit mothers, and to place them, for a hefty fee, in loving homes where they'll be "wanted" -- according to his own judgment, at least. He's good at what he does -- the best -- but with his moral compass wavering and on the verge of quitting for good, he finds himself blackmailed into one last job, which turns out very -- catastrophically -- differently from what he expects.

The characters are vividly drawn and for the most part sympathetic, if imperfect, and the pacing is so rapid you can hardly put the thing down. I neglected work! Reed is skilled at capturing the inner life of both her protagonists and antagonists, through monologue and stream of consciousness (although her main villain remains a little flat) without ever being boring (a neat trick with stream of consciousness and not easy to do). I think this book has a somewhat stronger ending than the also excellent "Thinner Than Thou," mainly because the story itself is smaller -- about just a few people rather than an entire religious movement. It's more covincing, makes more sense, and provides more closure.

Putting down a book by Kit Reed is a hard thing to do. Not just because it's good, which it is, but because it's like trying to put your conscience on mute before it's done asking you what on earth you think you're doing, and just who, exactly, do you think you are. That's just what Reed does here in The Baby Merchant. Some writers speak to their readers, asking provocative questions through symbolism and innuendo. Kit Reed reaches out from the page and pokes you. It's alarming, sometimes disquieting, but never inappropriate. And, of course, it doesn't hurt that the characters in The Baby Merchant, no matter how strange or unlikable or pathetic or morally-questionable, are always engaging, and sometimes a little too believable to be comfortable. Particularly the shockingly enigmatic merchant himself, Tom Starbird. Which is exactly what we need. We need a little discomfort. Asking hard questions isn't supposed to be comfortable. It's supposed to be necessary. All that being said however, the book is a blast. If you read Reed just for the fun of it, The Baby Merchant will not disappoint. It works on a strickly entertaining level, if that's all you're looking for. But like many of Reed's works, especially her latest few, you can admire what you see in the looking glass, or you can go through it.

Kimberly Anne Shope was a young teenager when she wrote this book, and yet it is the best book for adopted children I have ever read. Told in a tender, loving way, it tells the adoption story from the point of view of the birth mother, and also the adoptee. As the mother of two adopted daughters, I treasure this book, and hope my daughters will pass it down to their children.

A Bear Named Song--The Gift of a Lifetime is one of, if not the best book for children on the sub- ject of adoption that I have ever read. The first part of the book, in which a girl sacrifices a favorite doll so that a less advantaged girl can have it puts us in touch with the birth mother's perspective. In my own experience with open adopt ion, my daughter's birth mother had the exact same feelings described in the book. The second half of the book is from the perspective of the adoptive parent and the adoptee, and it is a very accurate account of the feelings of all concerned. It is all very touching and I must admit that no matter how many times I read it, I always cry.

My 3 year old adopted daughter from Korea checked this book out from our church library. I had no idea it was about adoption. It appeared to be just another story about Christmas.

When I read it aloud to her, I cried. First the little girl has a special doll named Amy, the same name as my daughter's special doll. Then 8 year old Robin gives away Amy to a less fortunate girl whom she visited on Christmas Eve(tears). The empty doll bed that night brings a mixture of sorrow and joy(more tears). On Christmas morning, Robin receives the toy bear that she wanted and names him Song to remind her of the song of joy in her heart when she gave away Amy(tears again).

Lastly when Robin grows up and finds that she cannot have children of her own, she applies the lesson she learned long ago: When you give away something valuable, you get something precious in return. Robin and her husband turn to adoption to find their something precious. They find it in Kimberly, the little girl who is the author of this book(many tears now). Truly a wonderful book with many emotions and a great way to tell children about adoption.

This is a very special "find" for those adopting families for whom spirituality is central. The presented information is both spiritually sound AND psychologically sound. I was both very pleased and very touched to find such a thoughtfully conceived and well-written book. It is accessible to even the busiest parent, but it is not a "cookie cutter" approach to the life book. It goes one step further, and it inspires. Thank you so very much.

As an adopted person, I can find no peace or answers to the haunting questions we adoptees struggle with apart from God and His Word, the Bible. Why am I in the family I'm in? Why did my birth mother give me up? Was my life a mistake? What do I do with all my unanswered questions, like missing history? How do I develop a healthy identity with no history? I have found that God has an answer for every question. What a wonderful contribution to adoption literature this book is! I can't recommend it highly enough!!
Sherrie Eldridge
Adoption author and speaker

Before You Were Mine is a "must read" for any adoptive parent! I've put off creating a lifebook for my daughter because I just didn't know how to go about it. After reading this book, I realize that a lifebook is essential for any adopted child, and it is so much more than a "scrapbook of my child's adoption story." It is my child's story before she was mine! It is vital for an adoptive child to know and understand his/her complete life story. Before You Were Mine offers step by step advice on how to work through and incorporate a child's history into a lifebook - even the difficult components. The book includes practical guidelines for putting together a lifebook and addresses both international and domestic adoptions.

The Bora Boys And The Last Big Door is fantastic children's picturebook by Michael J. Feeney about two young boys who meet the ghost of an old sailor in the attic. When the ghost learns that one of the boys was adopted from Cambodia, he takes them both on a special naptime trip to see the Cambodia of old, during Khmer New Year, a time of great celebration, oxcart races, and festive foods. The come home from the dream remembering their adventure, and knowing a little more about a land so far away. The colorful illustrations by John Devaney add a dreamlike quality to this warm and delightful story about connecting to one's roots and experiencing new things.

This book has changed the life of my family - what a delight to have a children's book that so opens our minds - We can't wait for the next one from Mr. Feeney!! Please, please, continue working with Mr. Devaney as your illustrator!! Outstanding artwork - where have you both been!! My five year old loves it - Although the suggested ages are 9-12...this children's book is enjoyed, I would say, by ages 5-12.

This book is awesome. The first book relating to adoption of a boy from Cambodia. Hurray! Plus, it is not mushy-really an adventure book.

Have fun with the voices and read it to your little one. I thought my 3 yo would get bored with it being a lot of words and more for older kids. He LOVED it and made it through the whole thing. (Secretly, I loved it too.)

As an adoptive mom, I've read literally dozens of adoption memoirs, and this is the finest out there. Hansen is brutally honest about the sometimes harrowing (sometimes amusing) world of infertility and adoption. In a genre that naturally lists toward the mushy, this memoir is both muscular and moving. Even though the book flap tips you off to the ending, the journey truly is a nail biter. Highly recommeded

I'm not a parent, and I don't want to be a parent. I picked up this book because I'm a fan of Brooks Hansen. I am now an even bigger fan; nay, a DEVOTEE of Brooks Hansen! I wish I had words to describe how moved I have been by this remarkable account. Hansen can be as glib and laugh-out-loud funny (or more so) than Annie Lamott at her best, but much more than that, there is such riveting honesty and spiritual depth that shines through every page of this extraordinary book. The incisive and illuminating way that the story is told transcends the subject matter; it is a journey of the soul. It's so rare that a book brings me face to face, as this one has, with my most fundamental questions about what I believe is true about life, and what I value, and how I see my own role in the world. Thank you, Brooks Hansen! I hope this book gets the attention it deserves. If this is not a bestseller, the world will be poorer for it.

This memoir is a page-turner about the 6 year journey Hansen and his wife endured -- from Manhattan fertility clinics to a children's hospital in Siberia -- to start their family. Hansen's writing is graceful and honest, sometimes dryly funny, sometimes quietly reflective. The book is essential reading for anybody navigating the complicated terrain of fertility treatment and adoption today, or anybody interested in a compelling, passionate account of one couple's struggle to become parents.

Butterflies are delicate, exotically beautiful, and terribly vulnerable. Jean Erichsen chose an apt metaphor for the twin daughters she and husband Heino adopted from Columbia. Following a memorably happy childhood shared with the Erichsen's biological son Kirk, the twins began a calamitous rebellion against parental authority in junior high school. They sneaked out at night with boys their parents didn't know, lost interest in their studies, were frequently tardy or skipped school altogether. It wasn't until they became ensnared in rival gang vendettas and were expelled from high school that they became truly aware of where their lives were headed and eagerly began to accept the help their parents persistently held out to them.

When the twins were ten years old, the family visited the orphanage from which they were adopted. All of them had their hearts stolen by a precocious little boy named Omar, who had been left in a bus station by his mother when he was six. The three siblings readily agreed that he should be adopted by their parents. Ever fearful of being abandoned again, Omar tried to be the perfect child. He was bright, athletic and charistmatic, which eventually caused the twins to be jealous and resentful toward him. This,too, created turmoil and unhappiness.

Jean and Heino lived the worst nighmares of every parent as the girls they nurtured and loved turned their back on them in favor of a lifestyle totally antithetical to family values. Smoldering beneath the surface were issues of race and culture as well as anger at their birth mother for giving them up for adoption. Their adoptive parents are white Scandinavian/German; the twins are darker skinned than most of the Chicanos with whom they tried to identify.

Jean writes with candor, insight, humor and sensitivity, sharing the intimate details that make the story so real to the reader. She has charted the journey of a once-happy family through an emotional upheaval that lasted almost four years before mutual love and respect were regained. The twins, now adults, are key personnel in the international adoption agency the Erichsens founded in 1981.

The book can also be read as an armchair adventure. Jean's finely wrought descriptions of landscapes, people, the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty in places like Panama City, Belize, and Bogota are on a par with those of well-known travel writers.

Before I read this book, I thought it would be another heart-warming adoption story of a family who brought three children, two twin girls and later, a boy, home from Columbia and then lived happily ever after. What I discovered was that this book is much more than that. It is a compelling account of what it was like raising these children to adulthood, with all the trials and tribulations most parents must face with their kids, but with cross-cultural, transracial and adoption issues added to the mix. This book is a reality check on what it is like raising children of a different culture and race. It will leave you with nothing but respect and admiration for Jean and her husband as they are faced with challenge after challenge, especially during the teen-age years. Their patience, determination, and unconditional love for their kids is heartfelt. I highly recommend it for anyone involved in adoption.

'Butterflies in the Wind' is a helpful book for parents raising children in a family with different race children. We adopted our lovely & vivacious 29 year old daughter, thirty years ago and I sometimes find it hard to explain to her, our journey and mission to adopt her. But Jean has helped me with this by writing this book. She has a special knack for putting into words, the many feelings, thoughts and struggles of parents and children. Her love and compassion for children shows through in many delightful anecdotes (I found my self laughing out loud while reading the section on 'teen' challenges). I appreciate her no-nonsense, unwavering approach to child rearing. The challenges of the 80s and 90s raising kids, were tough. But discussing the challenges never seems to take away from the main message of the book, that children are treasures to be protected, nourished and cherished in a family.

This book did a fantastic job of covering the wide range of emotions that children will encounter when they bring an adoptive sibling into their home. Both my four-year old and six-year old love it. It's great for beginning readers and has some remarkably touching moments for a children's book. HIghly recommended!

I bought this for my then 7 year-old to prepare her for the arrival of a new 3 year-old sibling. It is covers the homestudy visits, pre-placement visits, and the younger child's initial acting out during the adjustment period. It helps the older child understand that it will not all be 'fun and games' when the new child arrives, and that the new child will likely be confused, sad, and even angry. I highly recommend this book for families planning to adopt an older (beyond infant) child.

Christine Mitchell, author of Welcome Home, Forever Child: A Celebration of Children Adopted as Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Beyond and Adoption Awareness In School Assignments: A Guide for Parents and Educators

As a prospective adoptive family it is wonderful to finally have access to a book for our older children (ages five and eleven) that describes the adoption of a younger child from the perspective of the older sibling. The brother and sister in the story get off to a rocky start but gradually bond, helping young readers to understand that the integration of the new sibling into the family may not be easy - but is ultimately worth it. We got it for our five-year-old for Christmas, but both children love it!

Steven Schuker's work is considered by many in the academic field as perhaps the most well researched and scholarly work in diplomatic history in recent memory. This book is a must for anyone who really wants to understand why the Paris Peace Process failed after the First World War, and why France was so ill-prepared for World War II. The End of French Predominance in Europe also provides great insight into France's situation in European politics, both in the inter-war period and today. This is a must read for any serious scholar of modern diplomatic or military history.

This is a first-rate book about France's troubles in the inter-war years. After World War I, France, although revaged by war, was the leading power in Europe. By the end of the 1920's, this predominance was gone and, with it, France's freedom of action in foreign affairs. The cause of all this was French money problems. France financed the war primarily through borrowing and expected to solve its problems with reparations payments from Germany. The French were not eager to put their financial house in order with new taxes. Germany had no intention of paying any reparations unless forced to do so. The United States, meanwhile, demanded that France pay its substantial war debts. The British considered French efforts to get Germany to pay vindictive. The end results of France's financial plight were, first, serious inflation in France which could be arrested only through U.S. and British financial intervention and, second, an overvalued Franc which caused problems in the 1930's. France's financial fate was now tied to unsympathetic outsiders. This loss of financial independence had foreign policy repercussions.

This rather arcane story is made almost simple by the author. While much of this work deals with financial history, the human element is not ignored. Particularly interesting is the discussion of the general ignorance of economics among French politicians. Also intriguing is the author's view that Herriot's slapdash operating methods hurt the French cause. This is a must-read for students of 20th Century French history.

Steven Schuker's work is considered by many in the academic field as perhaps the most well researched and scholarly work in diplomatic history in recent memory. This book is a must for anyone who really wants to understand why the Paris Peace Process failed after the First World War, and why France was so ill-prepared for World War II. The End of French Predominance in Europe also provides great insight into France's situation in European politics, both in the inter-war period and today. This is a must read for any serious scholar of modern diplomatic or military history.