Tag Archives: book reviews

A Street Cat Named Bob

About a month ago a friend lent me a really heartwarming book.  I blew through it in a weekend.  I’ve never done a book review for the Pets blog before, but this seems appropriate.  The book is called “A Street Cat Named Bob: How One Man and His Cat Found Hope on the Streets,” by James Bowen.  Don’t worry: this isn’t a real tear-jerker of a book.  It’s a sweet, inspirational story of how a very special cat inspired a lost man to take control of his own life. James Bowen was a recovering drug addict in London.  He’d just … Continue reading →

Book Review: All About Adoption:How Families Are Made and How Kids Feel About It

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All About Adoption: How Families Are Made and How Kids Feel About It is a book from Magination Press, which specializes in titles helping children understand tough situations or deal with feelings. (Magination Press is also the publisher of Maybe Days, a Book about Foster Care.) All About Adoption authors Marc Nemiroff and Jane Annunziata are both clinical psychologists specializing in families and children. All About Adoption starts out by saying “there are lots of different ways to have a baby. ..some parents have one baby..and some parents have two or three babies all at once. “Babies grow inside a … Continue reading →

A Middle-Grade Novel to Skip

There is a dearth of adoption stories, either fiction or non-fiction, for kids in between the picture book stage and the young-adult novel stage. So it’s doubly disappointing that the latest one I read perpetuates old stereotypes. Trophy Kid, or How I Was Adopted by the Rich and Famous is by Steve Atinsky. We hear a lot nowadays about celebrities adopting. Atinsky did have a creative idea to look at what a 13-year-old son of movie stars (one of whom is a political candidate) thinks of his adoption ten years later. Jozef Francis (Joe) was orphaned by the fighting in … Continue reading →

Book Review: Families Are Different

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My last blog reviewed two books on families which showcase the diversity of families in gorgeous photographs of families, both doing everyday things and celebrating special events. Families Are Different was written and illustrated by Nina Pelligrini, a mother of two adopted daughters who said this book was inspired by feelings expressed by one of her daughters. The book’s characters are two daughters from Korea and their two white parents. With its simply-drawn illustrations and its matter-of-fact narration by one of children, the book is well-suited to younger children but makes a point that will be appreciated by older children … Continue reading →

Best Bedtime Books for Toddlers

My children and I enjoy reading books. Even though a couple of them are too young to read yet, they like to listen. My youngest especially likes to look at the pictures and pick out animals from the pages. She sometimes takes over story time by labeling everything she sees on the page. I let her because the others seem to like her little narratives too. Soon she will be retelling her version of the story in her own words as I turn the pages. There are several bedtime books we’ve enjoyed reading and exploring this month: *Ten, Nine, Eight … Continue reading →

China Adoption Book Review Series: China Ghosts

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Like Karin Evans, author of The Lost Daughters of China, Jeff Gammage is a journalist. His memoir, written seven years after Evans’, is entitled China Ghosts: My Daughter’s Journey to America, my Journey to Fatherhood. The title is apt: while Gammage credits Kay Ann Johnson, author of Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment and Orphanage Care in China with helping him understand the context of his daughter’s story, his own book focuses much more tightly on his story and his daughter’s. Gammage and his wife Christine adopted a two year old in Aug 2002. His memoir is valuable for … Continue reading →

China Adoption Book Review Series: Wanting a Daughter, Part Two: Chinese Do Adopt Daughters

My last blog shared some of Kay Ann Johnson’s research from her book Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son. This blog continues with more of Johnson’s research, this time in an area which I have never seen addressed in all the reading I’ve done about adoption in China. This topic is the adoption of Chinese foundlings by Chinese parents in China. Johnson began her research interested in the situation of birthparents who abandoned children. She soon discovered a greater interest in what became of the children. Only a minority, she says, (her book was published in 2004) are adopted abroad, … Continue reading →

China Adoption Book Review: Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son

Kay Ann Johnson is a professor of Asian Studies and Politics at Hampshire College. Yet when she adopted her daughter from a Chinese orphanage in 1991, she felt not only the anxiety of participating in what was then a new adoption program, but also a great desire to learn more about her daughter’s story, or at least the story of many girls like her. Why are children, especially girls, abandoned in China? What consequences—emotional and practical—do the birthparents face? Do most foundlings enter the orphanage system? Johnson’s 2004 book, Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption and Orphanage Care … Continue reading →

Book Review: Allison

Caldecott Medalist Allen Say, who has written about his own family’s connections with both Japan and America, here tells a story of an Asian girl who is processing her growing awareness of her adoption. The plot is simple: Allison is happy to receive an ethnic dress like her doll wears, but grows quiet as she looks at her family in the mirror and notice that the only one who looks like her is her doll. Allison asks where her doll came from, and her father tells how they brought both Allison and her doll back from “a far country”. (Allison … Continue reading →

My Favorite Adoption Book Reviews of 2009

Last year, I wrote about my favorite books I reviewed in 2008. Here are favorites from the children’s adoption books I’ve reviewed this year. (These are books which I’ve reviewed here in the Adoption Blog in 2009. They may have been published in prior years.) In My Heart, by Molly Bang, is a wonderful book for any child. It’s a story of her mother telling her child that throughout the various activities of their separate days, he is always in her heart—and his parents, friends and teachers are in his heart too. The child pictured looks Indian or Latino and … Continue reading →