Tag Archives: orphans

What Will Really Happen to Adoption in China, Post-Quake?

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The Chinese government says it is drafting plans for adoptions of quake orphans, and phones at local Civil Affairs Bureaus are ringing off the hook. One Western newspaper even estimated that there are more Chinese calling about adopting than there are orphans. It remains to be seen what will happen. Do Chinese parents calling about adoption today still see it as offering to foster children, or do they truly understand adoption as making a child a permanent part of your family tree? Perhaps they do. Perhaps the restrictions on bearing children have left more people wanting to love more children … Continue reading →

Daddy-Long-Legs – Jean Webster

I’ve heard about the book “Daddy-Long-Legs” on several occasions, and knew there was a Fred Astaire-Leslie Caron movie based on it, but it wasn’t until the other day that I finally picked it up. You know I’m a big Louisa May Alcott/L.M. Montgomery/Gene Stratton-Porter fan – this book fits right into that genre and I was captivated immediately. Jerusha Abbot has lived her entire life at the John Grier Asylum for Orphans. Now that she is seventeen, she’s lived there longer than most of their wards. The trustees have been at quite a loss to know what to do with … Continue reading →

Book Review: Orphan Train Children: David’s Search

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Another in a series by Joan Lowery Nixon depicting fictional children who rode the orphan trains in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, David’s Search tells the story of an eleven-year-old who lives on the streets of New York. His older chum who looks after him tells him to go to the Children’s Aid Society, where he will be sent to a farm, fed three meals a day, and maybe even have real parents. David can just barely remember the parents who died when he was very young, and he dreams of having a mother again. In 1965 Missouri, … Continue reading →

The Story of the Orphan Trains

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My last blog introduced my review of the Orphan Train Children series of children’s books. Twenty pages of historical notes in the back of each book tell the story of the real “orphan trains”, which took more than 150,000 children in the care of the New York Children’s Aid Society to rural communities between 1856 and 1929. Another hundred thousand were sent to the West by the New York Foundling Home. The notes explain the conditions in the Lower East Side of New York, the diseases which took many lives, and the fact that many children were from immigrant families … Continue reading →

Book Review: The Orphan Train Children Series, Part One

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There are two new book series by prolific children’s author Joan Lowery Nixon. Two of the seven books in the Orphan Train Adventures series have won major awards. A spin-off series, Orphan Train Children, is a series of small books telling the individual stories of fictional children on the train. My first reaction upon seeing this series was, “oh, no”. A children’s book about abandoned children being put on a train, stood on platforms for townspeople to choose from, then being used for farm labor? Sure non-adopted kids might find this bit of history new and unusual, but won’t it … Continue reading →

Mr. Finnegan’s Giving Chest – Dan Farr

Christmas shouldn’t end just because the day itself has come and gone. With that in mind, I’d like to share with you one of the gifts our children received from their grandparents this year – a picture book entitled “Mr. Finnegan’s Giving Chest.” Maggie is a bully. She enjoys picking on children at school and has very little compassion for their feelings. It gets worse around Christmas time. She hates the season; it brings out all of her little beasty tendencies. One day Maggie’s coat gets snagged on a fence while she’s chasing a little boy from school, and she … Continue reading →

Spotlight on African Adoptions

This week I want to specifically focus on adoptions from Africa. Why Africa? Because there are currently 14 million orphans in Africa and by the year 2010 there will be more than 25 million. This one continent holds more than half of the orphans in the world. The purpose of the next few days is to put a spotlight on Africa and the huge need of the orphans there. While the number of children waiting for adoption is very high, the continent of Africa also has a fairly low incidence of adoption. Compared to countries like China, Russia and Guatemala … Continue reading →

Anne of Green Gables — L.M. Montgomery

Beloved by millions around the world, “Anne of Green Gables” by L.M. Montgomery is one of those books that takes permanent residence in your heart. I was first introduced to Anne through the Wonderworks production for Public Television starring Megan Follows. This was shortly after it first came out, when I was 10. There were so many similiarities between myself and Anne that I knew I had to read the book. I fell in love from page one and the love affair is still going strong. Anne Shirley was raised in an orphanage and it seems that no one wants … Continue reading →

Ten Thousand Sorrows — Elizabeth Kim

“Ten Thousand Sorrows” is a nonfiction account of a Korean girl who was born to an unmarried mother. The social stigma this birth brought to the family was incredible. The mother was forced to live on the outskirts of town, far away from the other villagers, and while working in the rice paddies, she was virtually ignored. No one would associate with “that kind of woman,” and she was treated like a leper. Despite this treatment, she did everything in her power to raise her daughter with joy and love. Elizabeth remembers a small town made of cardboard boxes and … Continue reading →

Madonna Makes Like Oprah

Last week, numerous entertainment magazines were a buzz with the news that Madonna wanted more children. A few days later clarification came via an announcement that said the superstar was considering adopting a child. Now, in a preview of a soon to be published article in Time magazine the Material Girl finally sets the record straight: she’s not planning to have more children right now, rather she is committing her time, money and energy to helping orphans in Malawi, Africa. “Now that I have children and now that I have what I consider to be a better perspective on life, … Continue reading →