Product Description

Drawn from personal experience, these stories offer vivid and beautifully rendered snapshots of the adoptive parenting experience. Featuring: Marcelle Clements, Laura Shaine Cunningham, Christina Frank, Jesse Green, Melissa Fay Greene, Doug Hood, Pamela Kruger, Jenifer Levin, Antoinette Martin, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Adam Pertman, Emily Prager, Amy Rackear, Bonnie Miller Rubin, Dan Savage, Bob Shacocchis, Jill Smolowe, Sheila Steinbeck, Joe Treen, and Jana Wolf.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #596156 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
From various perspectives, 20 adoptive parents offer evocative, sometimes provocative, personal essays that have the liveliness and immediacy of prose fiction. Biological parents are variously imagined, sought and found in the opening section, "Reflections on Birth Parents." In "Encounters with the Unexpected," adoptive parents confront "postadoption depression," family wariness, ethnic identity issues and disabling psychological problems. Each family (single parent, gay parent, divorced parents, intra-family adoption, blended family) is adoptive in its unique way, persuasively confirmed in "Variations on Family." While the early sections focus on the parent-child relationship, the concluding "Personal Transformations" leans toward the child-to-parent effect; as one writer puts it, "I knew a child would rearrange my home life, but upend my career and worldview? Those two items weren't even on my list." Any parent will find commonality here, but the collection will especially engage adoptive parents in conversation and controversy with people who share their dilemmas and delights. Diverse as this collection is, it's worth noting that the essayists are professional writers (they include Jacquelyn Mitchard, Emily Prager and Dan Savage), most of the children are preadolescent and 11 of the adoptions are transnational (five of them from China).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
...a handy tool for adoptive parents-to-be or for those who simply want to learn the ins and outs. -- The Chicago Tribune, January 8, 2006

...a magical and candid collection, which I found impossible to put down -- Marybeth Lambe, Adoptive Families, December 2005

A Love Like No Other, accordingly, leans more in a literary direction than an instructional one. -- New York Times, November 27, 2005

Kruger and Smolowe's collection offers an exploration of raising adopted children as multidimensional as the experience itself. -- San Francisco Chronicle, November 6, 2005

[T]hese 19 moving dispatches speak most powerfully about contemporary family life. -- Health, November 2005

[an] impressive array of skillfully executed essays from the perspective of adoptive parents. -- Library Journal, November 1, 2005

About the Author
Pamela Kruger is a contributing editor at Child magazine whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Fast Company, Redbook, and other publications.

Jill Smolowe is the author of the adoption memoir An Empty Lap: One Couple's Journey to Parenthood. An award-winning journalist, she is currently on staff at People.

Customer Reviews

A Must Read for Adoptive Families/Friends
I saw this book advertised in Adoptive Families magazine and immediately ordered it. So many of the essays spoke to me even though each detailed experience was different. Stories about domestic adoptions, post adoption depression, international adoption, open adoption, special needs adoption, response of family to the adoption and more are shared in an honest and touching manner. As a mom of 3 boys (2 adopted from China) I could relate to many of the experiences which were written about. Not only did the essays cause me to reflect on experiences our family has already gone through, but provided me with insight on experiences we will very likely face in the future (racism at school, discussions about birth parents, whether to or when to take our children back to the country of birth, teenage identity issues, etc) This book is a must read not only for parents who have or will adopt a child but for their families and friends as well.

Honest, moving and funny. A book for every parent.
I bought this excellent book for friends who are in the process of adopting a child and found myself unable to put it down. Besides being beautifully written the essays are insightful and personal -- ranging from funny and surprising to heartbreaking stories about love and what it means to be a parent. A must read.

And now you know the rest of the story...
So much of the writing about adoption winds up with the supposed happy ending: We got a child and loved it instantly and created a family, lucky us. But of course that's only the beginning, for any family.
The essays in this collection go beyond that Kodak moment to tell us what happened next. What happens if you've promised two birth mothers the stable home they can't provide -- and then your husband tells you he wants a divorce? Can you honor your daughter's ethnic heritage without arranging for her to study Chinese? How do you respond when your 13-year-old announces, "I don't hate you because I'm an adolescent who's trying to adjust to the fact that he was adopted. I hate you personally."
These accounts, by 20 skilled writers who are also adoptive parents, are sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes comic, but they're always stunningly honest.