Product Description

With insight and emotion, Be My Baby dramatizes the deeply felt bonds and life-affirming experiences that are at the heart of an adoptive family. Told through the voices of adoptive parents, their children (young and grown-up) and birth mothers, and accompanied by stunning photographs, it offers a luminous portrait of family life in the tradition of such best-selling books as Best Friends and Sisters.

With over thirty first-person accounts, including such notable adoptive parents as Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest and Brooke Adams and Tony Shalhoub, Be My Baby evocatively portrays the rich variety of adoption arrangements and experiences.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #778619 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This photo-essay features the selected reflections of adoptive parents, adopted children ages 9 to 19, adults adopted as infants, and two birth mothers. The majority of the pieces focus on feelings and memories of parents or adult children. A variety of situations are presented: private and agency adoptions, domestic and international adoptions, only-child and multiple-children families, and families with combinations of adopted and biological children. The subjects are candid when discussing the conflicting and complex emotions surrounding such issues as nature versus nurture theories, ethnic identity, sibling relationships, feelings of loss, insecurities and fears, and coping with reactions of others to blended family. Despite the wide range of experiences and emotions presented, the overall message is positive and affirming. The cases included make for interesting and thought-provoking reading and could be used as discussion starters. Quality black-and-white photographs of the subjects illustrate this oversized title.-Heide Piehler, Shorewood Public Library, WI

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Kinn interviewed birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted children to examine how adoption impacts individuals and families. Through these first-person accounts and photographs by Shung, this book brings faces and voices to the emotions and trends behind the process of adoption, from open adoption to multiracial adoption. Adopting parents talk about the frustrations and joys of the process; birth parents speak of loss and expectations for their children; and the children talk about their shifting sense of identity and affiliation. The total package is an absorbing look at the joys and challenges of adoption and family formation. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Jamie Lee Curtis, author of the best-selling Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born
"This is such a loving, honest, and deeply helpful book."

Customer Reviews

Does not include all types of adoptive families
Although this book is well written, I was disappointed that Kinn did not cover all types of adoptive families. Obviously, she had to limit the families she wrote about in some way, however, she neglected to include any gay and lesbian adoptive families. Kinn briefly states in the foreword that she did not include gay and lesbian families because the "children's issues spoke more to their unique family structures than to having been adopted." It is obvious to me though, that all adoptive children, regardless of their "unique family structure," would have some type of thought about the fact that they were adopted. My husband and I are in the process of adopting a child, and we think that the greatest part of adoption is being able to build a beautiful family that goes beyond stereotypes. I really feel that Kinn's decision to neglect certain adoptive children was unfair and biased. If you are going to show the true beauty of adoption, you need not forget the fact that adopting is a way for all types of people to create a family.

Documents the diversity of adoptive families
Adoptions was once an intensely private affair. With today's more accepting social climate (including the open records laws for adult adoptees seeking information on their birth parents) that is no longer a routinely imposed social custom. In Be My Baby: Parents And Children Talk About Adoption, Gail Kinn documents the diversity of adoptive families. The text is largely an interview based format, splendidly enhanced with the photography of Ken Shung and provides a warm, insightful, occasionally inspiring, and highly recommended reading, candidly revealing what the adoptive family experience is like in our contemporary culture.

Provides a warm presentation for the entire family
Be My Baby provides a warm presentation for the entire family: a coffee table-type survey of adoption where parents and children share their feelings and experiences through interviews and photos. Ken Shung's black and white photos capture family units in this expressive, fine coverage.