Adoption Books

This collection will break your heart and then mend it again. The contributors are brilliant, unflinching, angry, proud, grieving, recording, resisting, transforming, and organizing. There hasn't been a book like this in the history of adoption, let alone transracial adoption, but hopefully there will be many more like it in the future.

This book provides an excellent insight into the special needs of transracially adopted children. The world needs love, and adoption provides that, but the children need understanding about their needs before and after adoption. I found it enlightening.

I loved this book. The style is flip, funny and fun. Penny is a feisty teenager with great spirit. I always wonder how an author can get so strongly, a character. Was Kathleen a foster kid? She sure tells it well. I read it twice and laughed out loud several times on both readings.

This book was recommended to me and I thought it was excellent reading. It's hard to believe that this is the author's first book! I will be watching for more by Kathleen Martin. It is well written with realistic characters. Brought back some memories from my teenage years. It's amazing how the author takes you on a roller coaster ride with Penny Maybe's life with such humour and wit. What I found extremely amazing is after I had just finished the book, my 15 year old daughter had become friends with a foster girl of 16 who had just moved into the neighbourhood. I cannot say enough to tell you the similarities between Penny and my daughter's new friend. The lies, lies, lies are just one example. It really is uncanny. Keep up the good work Kathleen!

I loved the book because what hapened to her brother almost hapened to mine (but it didnt) and I am thankful for it.It is an easy book great for all ages.You WON'T want to put it down.

This is a book about a girl who gets adopted because her new mother couldn't have a baby at the time. Now she is pregnant and is going to have four babies.To find out what happens in rest of the story you're going to have to read it.

I love this book. It is really creative even the characters, they seem so real. At the beginning of the book you have no idea why they call it Pick of the Litter, but you're soon to find out.

The best thing about Lindsay's book is that she allows the pregnant woman to consider single parenting. It is so important for women considering adoption to explore ALL the alternatives, not just adoption. This book offers a well-rounded look at the options, without bias or hidden agenda. I wish I'd read it during my crisis pregnancy.

While waiting to be chosen by our son's birthparents, our social worker recommended this book. It is a deeply moving look into the birthparent's hearts as they make the difficult decision whether to choose parenting their baby or making an adoption plan. It's an excellent book for pre-adoptive parents looking to understand and respect the birthparent's point-of-views.

More than just a directory of rescue groups, this book has correct information on what each breed it covers is like. Has accurate descriptions of the pros and cons of each breed. Tells about common problems with each breed. Gives information on the breed's typical temperament range and what it is like to live with the breed. This helps people choose the right breed for them. I find the information in here to be much better than that of most books about the various dog breeds.

If you're looking for a pet or looking for what to do with one you've found, this is the resource to use. It has listings of breed rescue groups for dog breeds in every state, plus miscellaneous other domestic species (ferret rescue) and wildlife (bat rescue).

"The Red Sea Place" is a well paced intelligent novel about a modern family that all family members can learn from and identify with. I was sorry to reach the last page and will miss the ongoing contact with the characters in the story. I gained new perspectives from this book and will look forward to a sequel.

"The Red Sea Place" opens with the main character, Laura, receiving "the letter that would change her life forever." The last sentence of the book reaffirms that Laura has indeed changed. In the 229 pages between, Laura faces many pressing personal problems with her two daughters and her adopted daughter, that daughter's father, Laura's husband, and her husband's elderly and ill mother. There's much good and realistic dialogue, considerable self-analysis, and interesting dilemmas. But Laura survives, grows, learns much, and becomes more self-sufficient. The book is a fast, easy, and engaging read. Recommended.

I loved this book. It was very exciting, especially because I like scary stuff too. My favorite character was Erin. Read it you'll love it!

This Betty Ren wright could not write a better book (or so I think). This book is about a girl and her foster brother wants to take piano lessons. All she wanted to do was explore haunted castles but the she gets stuck staying in an apartment that will bw torn down soon... oops I'm starting to say to much. I think anyone who love horoor would love this book!

This is an extremely interesting book, detailing one woman's search for her birth mother at a time when ALL adoption records were sealed. This gives the story a lot of drama, as Florence must become her own private investigator while unearthing clues about her history over resistance from her adopted family. It's a story of perseverance with a great payoff. The book unfolds like a classic mystery, with the reader becoming as interested as the heroine is in her origins, the circumstances of her adoption, and her birth mother's whereabouts. One also sympathizes a great deal with the writer as she diligently calls government office after office, simply trying to find the name of the woman who gave birth to her. She knows the office employees have the name and file right in front of them, and that her fate is literally in their [disinterested] hands...yet they are precluded by law from sharing information with her. I do take exception to the idea, posted elsewhere, that all parties involved in an adoption need to consent before information is shared. If I gave up a baby some day, I can see how I might not want to discuss it or necessarily made public...but I don't have a right to cut another person, and perhaps their children, off from their family history. Everyone has the right to know who their family was and where they came from. It has a great deal to do with our identity.

This was the first book I read about an adoptee searching for "someone who looks like me" and it made me viscerally understand the yearning most adoptees have, despite the most loving adoptive parents and most fulfilling lives. They are always aware that there is someone out there with a truly vested interest in what became of them. This beautifully written addictively readable autobiography of a search made me realize that some form of open adoption is the healthiest adoption for the child and both sets of parents, even if they do not fully accept this at the beginning. Consciously ignoring one of life's basic assumptions, that of knowing the people who led to one's very creation, should never be attained without the full knowledge and consent of ALL parties, and most especially the one who is the focus of the new family.

If you are an adoptee looking for an easy answer to your problems, be warned: Richard Frayne's book offers hope and insights - but no instant or easy solutions. His journey has been a life-long one and, although he appears to have emerged more or less in one piece, it has not been an easy ride - either for him or for those around him.

The message is that you will have to dig deep, and keep on digging, to uncover and come to terms with the trauma of being given away at birth. And that you will need professional help with this. Frayne shows how his encounters with Jungian analysis, meditation, Transactional Analysis and finally, hypnotherapy have each played their part in the jigsaw-like healing process.

There are some very funny, touching and haunting parts in this book, but the overriding impression from this book is one of the need for ruthless honesty - he has even bravely allowed his wife to write a searing account of her life with an adoptee.

This is an interesting and useful book, not just for adoptees, but for anyone who has experienced parental rejection at an early age.

'Searching For Molly Parker' is an entertaining and insightful look into the life and mind of an adoptee. The author, Richard Frayne, educates and entertains the reader while maintaining a wonderful balance of drama, comedy and romance. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has been affected either directly or indirectly by adoption, abuse, or abandonment.

Looks as if they are correct. This is a great three-book starter set for the series. Lemony Snicket has made a great series of books for those people that can't stand everything being sweetness and light. In the process we learn many lessons in life from grammar to etiquette. Similar to Rocky and Bullwinkle there is something for everyone at any age.

It would be wise to buy this three book set as you will be hooked on the story from the beginning and have all three books finished before you have a chance to buy the forth.
Coming in a case allows you to set the books up on the shelf without needing any supporting books or book ends.

I will not go through the contents of the books, as you will get a better idea of what you are purchasing from the individual reviews. However the books included in this set are "The Bad Beginning," "The Reptile Room," and "The Wide Window." Be sure to look for my individual reviews of each book. In each you will se the pattern that makes this series popular and maybe learn a little something on the side.

When I first started reading this series of books I was set back a little because these stories are not written in the style of typical children's books. These stories are dark, and the evil characters are truly evil. A number of reviewers have panned this series because they are dark, and because they often push the boundaries of what some of us may find acceptable for children to read. It is because of the dark imagery that I have typically recommended that age 9 be a minimum age. Some children may be unprepared for these books until later.

In the first three books in this series we learn that the three Baudelaire children, Sunny, the baby, Klaus, her brother, and Violet, a young teen, have lost their parents in a terrible fire. The children are sent to live with their evil uncle Olaf, who has ulterior motives yet to be revealed in later books. The children quickly learn how evil he is, and ultimately escape. They next go to live with their uncle Montgomery Montgomery in "The Reptile Room," only to be forced to move on again. In "The Wide Window" the children live with an aunt who is afraid of everything, only to ultimately be forced to move on again, continually chased by the evil Count Olaf in a variety of disguises.

Book 11 in this series is soon to come out, and the original plan was for there to be 12 books. These books are like potato chips. Once you start one and find it intriguing, you will want to keep reading. If you do not like the first book, plan to stop with the first.

This series is highly creative and many children 9 and older find them enjoyable. My children read them as teens and loved them. They did think they were different and unusual, and since they could not explain why I read them myself. They are different and unusual, but they also introduce children to situations that have occurred to children in the real world. These books provide a good way to introduce scary subjects.