Search Results for: blog book review the girls who went away

China Adoption Book Review: The Lost Daughters of China

Karin Evans is a journalist. Her book, Lost Daughters of China: Abandoned Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past alternates between her story of adopting a one-year-old Chinese girl and her research into the circumstances leading to the abandonment of so many girls from China. (I should point out, as I’ve written before, that abandonment is not always—nor even usually in other countries—leaving a child to its fate. In countries where there are no adoption agencies helping birthparents nor laws allowing the relinquishment of babies, leaving a child in a place where she will easily … Continue reading →

Book Review: Children of Open Adoption and their Families

Children of Open Adoption and their Families, by Kathleen Silber and Patricia Martinez Dorner, is an important read for adoptive parents, whether their adoptions are open or not. Other books describe the process of adoption. This book explores how the children in open adoptions actually feel and think, and how the adoptive and birth family members feel. These stories of children and their parents are a gold mine for those of us who’ve always wondered, “But how does open adoption work, exactly?” This book was written in 1987, but open adoption had already been in place in some agencies for … Continue reading →

Top Twelve Adoption Books of 2008 Part Two: Nonfiction

This blog is the second part of my “Top Twelve” of the books I’ve reviewed this year. My last blog reviewed picture books, including three from my Adoption Books with Great Art series, and also fictional offerings for pre-teens and early teens. This blog is on my favorite nonfiction about adoption. The Adoption Guide 2008 stands out as a compact yet comprehensive resource. It contains articles on infant adoption, international adoption, and foster-adoption. It has a summary of adoption trends and current regulations for twelve countries, a state-by-state listing of agencies and attorneys, guides for choosing an agency and/or attorney, … Continue reading →

Book Review: The Mistress’ Daughter

A.M. Homes remembers waking as a young child sobbing for her “other mother”. Although she was adopted as an infant, some part of her yearned for the parents from whom she came. Many adoptees do the same. But what if, when you find these long dreamed-of parents, they have feet very much made of clay? Novelist and short-story writer Homes, whose fiction works include The Safety of Objects and Music for Torching, writes her own story in The Mistress’ Daughter. It’s a not-often-told story that will be of interest to many adoptees. Certainly many birthparents, such as those profiled in … Continue reading →

July in Review, Part Two

I blogged about a tragedy in which a young mother did not seek medical help for her daughter who wasn’t eating, and the child died. The 19-year-old claimed that she had tried to plan adoption for her daughter but that agencies wouldn’t work with her because she had no prenatal care. A hard-to-believe claim, but the story got me thinking : Could Education Have Prevented This Tragedy? In Let’s Educate Our Youth About Adoption, I suggested that preschoolers learn to call 911, and that young children learn to see adoption as a normal way of building a family. I suggested … Continue reading →

More Reaction to: The Girls Who Went Away

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This is my third blog on the powerful book, The Girls Who Went Away: Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption During the Decades Before Roe v. Wade. One disquieting aspect of the book is a letter written to the author about a 2003 adoption. The writer was a friend of the adoptive parents, who had supported and housed the young mother during her pregnancy, then felt betrayed when she didn’t sign the papers right away. She did end up placing but the letter writer was still uneasy. She felt that the girl would have parented her baby given the right … Continue reading →

My Reactions to The Girls Who Went Away

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I have just written a blog reviewing Ann Fessler’s book The Girls who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade. It’s an awfully long blog for a book report. Yet I felt I couldn’t do this book justice in one blog. This blog is some personal musings of mine. I’ve just spent most of the day rereading the book for the third time. Of course I have known that birthmothers of 1945-1973 were often acceding to pressure from their parents, boyfriends, or schools, which did not welcome (and … Continue reading →

Book Review: The Girls Who Went Away

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I wrote a blog last week that mentioned that teen mothers who place their babies for adoption are more likely to stay in school and remain off welfare than teens who choose to parent. I said that today, the peer pressure among teens is along the lines of “how could someone be so unnatural and irresponsible as to give up her own baby?” My writing probably showed that I wish more teens knew about adoption and thought of it as a positive solution. This blog reviews a book about the other side of the story. The Girls Who Went Away: … Continue reading →

The Books of Carolyn Keene

When I was a pre-teen, I read every Nancy Drew and Dana Girls book I could get my hands on. Sure, they were a little campy, but what girl didn’t want to imagine themselves as a pretty super-sleuth, going forth and saving the world? You could do that with a heroine like Nancy Drew. As an aspiring author, I was also fascinated by Carolyn Keene. What type of woman must she be to be able to turn out so many intriguing stories? Then I found out – she’s not just one woman. She’s a whole team of them (and men, … Continue reading →

Adoption in the Little House TV series, seasons 4, 5 and 6

This is a series of blogs on adoption references in well-known TV shows or books that our children will likely come across. The last few blogs have focused on the TV show Little House on the Prairie. You can find the first blog in the series by clicking here. In the fourth season episode “Be My Friend”, Laura finds messages in a bottle from a desperate girl who is isolated in the woods with her fanatical father, from whom she has concealed her pregnancy. Charles and Laura find the baby, whom Laura cares for while Charles inquires of the minister … Continue reading →