Adoption Books

This book was a great reading. I never put the book down, read it in one sitting. The way of the author's words make you feel like you were in the story, feeling her own feelings. Congrats!! Excellent book Fatimah!! I hope you keep writing, I'll purchase every one.

Kindred is a splendid collection of emotionally poignant short stories that reveals the pain and torment of a young girl at the hands of her adopted mother. Broxton speaks of eating disorders with a candidness not often found in the Black community. It's inspiring!

This book is a great starting place for someone interested in adoption. It helps the reader evaluate their feelings about parenting a child that isn't biologically connected to them. It connects the reader to their feelings about adoption as well as valuable sources of information concerning the adoption process.

If you're considering adopting a child, this book is a great starting point on an emotional and intellectual level.

What a great book! This is exactly what adoptive parents need. There are no other books that talk about the emotions we deal with--frustrations from the paper chase, anger at the process, despair from waiting. This book showed me how to turn the negatives into a solid foundation for my child to come home to. It's based on solid science, too, not just somebody's idea. Don't adopt without this book!

As an person raised under closed adoption, I never knew openness of the kind Micky Duxbury writes about in Making Room in Our Hearts could exist. I love the case studies and accompanying photographs of families in open adoption because we humans are storytelling creatures who learn best through engaging tales. I learned that openness can exist in adoption, with birth and adoptive families discovering together how to best support the growth of the adopted young person - wow, what a concept! "Open Adoption," it turns out, is not a one-size-fits-all, utopian arrangement but a supported process of learning how to be flexible, compassionate, and respectful to the people who love the people we love. The family ties that Duxbury describes are the most important "possessions" we can give our children. In addition to her own story as an adoptive parent, Duxbury includes a dozen case studies and a generous list of adoption resources in the back. I love this book and learned so much from reading it. Highly recommended to all interested in the practice of adoption, especially prospective and current adoptive parents.
Nicole J. Burton, Swimming Up the Sun: A Memoir of Adoption

This book is an excellent resource for anyone involved in open adoption. Duxbury integrates first-person stories with information on the basic philosophy and history of openness. The stories are authentic and honest, and do not shy away from acknowledging challenges and mistakes. Especially valuable are those from decades-old adoptions, offering a glimpse into how open adoption relationships evolve over time. I appreciated the story groupings which provided multiple perspectives on a single adoption--from birth/first parents, adoptees, adoptive parents, siblings and extended family members. Prompts encourage readers to mine these shared experiences for practical application in their own situations. Optimistic without falling into Pollyanna-ness, the book touches on public and private adoption, opening closed adoptions, openness in international adoptions, how to make openness work, and needed changes in the current adoption system. A comprehensive list of open adoption resources (publications, agencies, organizations, etc.) is also included.

Although a good resource for families at any stage, I think this book will be especially valuable for pre-adoptive parents and expectant parents considering placement. It not only provides a realistic look at openness, but also makes a strong case for the importance of adequate preparation and ongoing post-adoption support for participants in open adoptions. The discussion of best practices in open adoption will help potential clients discern which agencies/professionals are committed to child-centered open adoption as a standard and which pay it mere lip service.

I bought several copies of this for my friends with kids and everyone loved it! Now I have to buy more for the people I forgot! Even the adults want to read it an look at the pictures!

Mary Scary is a sequel to last year's Dreadful Ed. In that book, the Queen of the nightmare world of Noturnia, a realms of ghosts and ghouls and all manner of creatures that go bump in the night, decides to replace her girl baby with a boy from the human world to give her husband an heir to the throne. Poor Ed was a normal human kid who had to learn how to try and be scary...But whatever happened to that girl who was swapped at the orphanage with Ed? This is her tale...

Mary Scary was a weird girl, that much the nuns at the orphanage knew right away. Rather than being made up of sugar and spice and everything nice, Mary dressed all in black and was made up of snakes, rats, bats, and grimy goo! It took some time but they finally found parents to adopt Mary Scary. Try as she might, Mary just never fit in at school. The other kids at school made fun of Mary by dressing just like her for Halloween. Then one day, Dreadful Ed, the son of the Boogeyman, tries to scare mary but fails. They soon recognize that they can help each other. Mary can teach Ed to be Scary, and Ed can teach Mary to be normal.

Mary Scary is a combination of Tim Burton's Nightmare before Christmas and Charles Addams' Addams Family comic strips. It is delightfully ghoulish, but in a harmless, fun kind of way. This makes the book very suitable to be read to children as they will surely appreciate the hilarious rhymes. Troy Nixey's art is the perfect complement to Andrew Cosby's story. The art is outlandish, colorful, and full of surprises. Well-suited for kids or adults.

REVIEWED BY TIM JANSON

Bechard captured the process of a Robin building a nest, laying eggs, keeping her eggs warm, feeding her young, and forcing her young out of the nest. This rare glimpse into the process fascinated Parish. Her mouth made an "O" shape and she made an "Ohhhh" sound as she saw the newly hatched birds. She never said that they were ugly, though they clearly are so. She was just amazed.
I had to explain to her that Mommy birds go out and get food for their babies. She was curious about why the Mommy bird would not feed the baby birds when they grew up. I explained that it is her way of saying, "Go get it yourself; you are a big kid now." She understood that.
This is a great gift for a pre-school child. I have had to read it several times to Parish. Its sing-song wording is perfect for young kids. Perhaps this would also be a great gift for those who know someone who will not "leave the nest"!

I am Sandy Bechard I am the wife of the Author. I helped him get some of the pictures in this book. I think the children will enjoy this book very much. It shows them some of the wonderful things they are missing outdoors.May help them to get away from there computers a little. Our Grandchildren love it...

Even though I have not directly experienced adoption in my own life, I responded immediately to the depth of emotion in this book. On one level, it is a moving prose poem that tells a personal story about how a woman never really "gets over" the loss of a child through adoption. Along the way, it gives the reader an understanding of the social and public policy issues surrounding closed adoption. I kept thinking about the points raised long after I had finished it. This is a great read --- it pulls you in from the first page and leaves you feeling wiser. when you're done

Very fast read. Excellently written. Dr. Reyman weaves her personal story with little known but important facts about the painful long term affects of surrendering a child, at birth, to closed adoption. A must for any therapist or counselor who works with women or families touched by adoption, or surrender. I also recommend it for Ghost Mothers and Ghost Children who might be thinking about starting the search for the other. I now think about adoption and surrender with a different and more enlightened eye. Read it. It's well worth the [price]!

I bought this not knowing whether it would be appropriate for my daughter, aged 7. It was, however, a perfect resource for her, guiding her gently to explore some of the facts and circumstances of her birth and life in China prior to my adopting her. She giggled at some questions, thought deeply about others, and seemed to really enjoy that she had the option to draw as well as to write (or dictate) her answers. We work on it together, some weeks a lot, and other weeks just a little. Like many things, creating this book is a process -- and a welcome one. I would highly recommend this to parents of children adopted from China.

My daughter and I made her lifebook together when she was 3.5 and we have read it many times since. She sometimes reads it to herself privately. We also talk frequently about all the issues/questions/feelings around her first year of life. Though Beth O'Malley's workbook covered much of the same ground, the fact that my daughter was filling in answers for herself felt different. Also, unlike the lifebook, which is largely a mother-written endeavor, the workbook was written by an adoption expert--and my daughter is getting to the stage where confirmation from a non-parent source matters!

This is an excellent resource in what I think of as a progression of lifebooks--the toddler lifebook (mainly photos), the small child lifebook
(photos plus more text and detail), this workbook, and eventually an
autobiography written by the teen adoptee. None of us ever really finishes writing our story, do we?

Claire McDonald
Mom to DD, age 7.5
President, Families with Children from Asia Winchester

My daughters are also sisters through adoption, and this book doesn't miss a beat showing how families formed though adoption are every bit as natural and connected as those formed through birth. And the illustrations are gorgeous! I highly recommend this book for children ages 3 and up and their families.

My daughter loves this book. We bought it to help prepare her as we are going to China to adopt a mei mei (little sister). Ed Young's pictures are always great. I highly recommend this book.

One part Homer, one part Salinger and a huge three parts that can only be labeled "Yansky," this coming of age Odyssey features a cast of misfits who are both endearing and enlightening. On the brink of manhood, the adopted Simon sets out on a journey to find his birth parents. Like Odysseus, he meets his obstacles with courage. Like Holden, he retains a healthy irreverence for all things fake. But in his quest for that which will bring meaning to his life, young Simon has something neither Salinger's nor Homer's hero had: the King of Rock and Roll in the car with him.

Yansky has a rare talent for transforming restaurants, motels and highways into mythic structures. Funny, poignant, and satisfying as a young adult road trip, this novel should have teens saying, "Yeah, this author really gets me." Those of us a little past the YA age can read (and reread) and remember when we were at that age when the rapid unfolding of life's mysteries was as exciting and scary as putting the pedal down on an open interstate.

Buy this book and enjoy the ride!

Being an avid reader of young adult literature, I am always on the look out for the next best thing. Brian Yansky's gem-of-a-novel fits the bill perfectly. Holden Caulfield meets Jack Kerouac for a truly entertaining and enlightening ride. If wands and wizards have left you all muggled out, if you are looking for something truly "precious" then I suggest you dive into MY ROAD TRIP TO THE PRETTY GIRL CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. Not only will you fall in love with the honesty of the characters and the simplicity of the tale, you will walk away demanding a sequel.

For a first novel,this book has several layers of both plot and nuance.She delves into our prejudices,both expressed and repressed.We are forced to examine our own souls in ways that may not be comfortable in the least.I thought she was a little viscious with the mother figure,but maybe that was a bit autobiographical.Her later books have improved in any number of ways.Maybe her opinion of her sainted mother has improved too.Her brand new book looks pretty good.I'll have to read it,I guess.

This is a wonderful story. It brought forward all the fears, and struggles we all have in our relationships with other races. But as we accept, with all our hearts the real person, the soul of another being, our love grows and expands. Our circle of family expands, and then hope really can spring eternal. If Cassie can accept the chalenges, so can we. Great little story, would love to hear more from this author!!! We need more stories that are uplifting, and to beable to read a book with out foul language or vile sexual content, is wonderful. I could recommend this book to any one, of any age, or race.