Adoption Options 2006

-- Library Journal, 11/1/2006

As the number of domestic and international adoptions increases, adoption continues to be a popular publishing subject. With the arrival of November—National Adoption Month—came many promising and complex investigations of the process that go beyond the usual how-to guides. LJ's trusty Lynne C. Maxwell probed and came up with a good deal of literary gold that shouldn't be missed.—Heather McCormack

Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections. EMK Pr. 2006. c.520p. ed. by Jean MacLeod & Sheena Macrae. index. ISBN 0-9726244-5-7 [ISBN 978-0-9726244-5-9]. pap. $29.95. PSYCH

Featuring over 100 contributors overseen by EMK Press writer-editors MacLeod and Macrae, this book is a virtual one-stop shop for adoption information for readers at any knowledge level. Divided into chapters like "Sleep," "Claiming," "Language," and "Food," it touches upon major issues in brief essays written by adoptive parents, adoptees, and therapists. For instance, in the chapters dealing with learning issues, educators and adoptive parents discuss the intricacies of forming effective individual education plans tailored to special-needs adoptees, while in the section on therapy, there are essays about selecting an appropriate therapist and about treating attachment disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. This is a welcome companion to another excellent resource, Laura Beauvais-Godwin and Raymond Godwin's The Complete Adoption Book: Everything You Need To Know To Adopt a Child. Strongly recommended for all public libraries and for large university social science collections.

Chasnoff, Ira J. & others. Risk and Promise: A Handbook for Parents Adopting a Child from Overseas. National Training Inst. Nov. 2006. c.108p. illus. ISBN 0-97077625-X. pap. $14.95. PSYCH

Unlike most other books on international adoption, this one has been devised by specialists in medicine and developmental psychology. Clinical pediatrician Chasnoff, licensed clinical psychologist Linda Schwartz, developmental psychologist Cheryl Pratt, and pediatrician Gwendolyn Neuberger present information critical to potential adoptive parents regarding the physiological and psychological development of children. Crucial material on evaluating birth weight and birth head circumference is presented, along with discussion of possible medical conditions that might afflict children adopted internationally. Extremely useful work sheets include growth charts, parent observation forms for on-site screening, questions for orphanage staff, development status checklists, and lists of attachment observations and of suggested items to bring when meeting the child. While it can be complemented by more general works such as Dawn Davenport's The Complete Book of International Adoption: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Your Child, this is the definitive source for adoptive parents seeking to make informed medical choices when adopting internationally. Highly recommended for large public and university library collections.

Davenport, Dawn. The Complete Book of International Adoption: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Your Child. Broadway. Nov. 2006. c.416p. ISBN 0-7679-2520-3. pap. $15.95. PSYCH

Davenport, an attorney and expert on international adoption for Resolve (a national infertility support organization), has written the definitive book on international adoption. This guide lives up to the promise of its subtitle, providing detailed, utilitarian advice for those who choose to adopt internationally. Davenport furnishes a wealth of practical information in an easy-to-read format that includes numerous charts presenting vital information for ready usage. For example, she presents a master checklist enumerating the documents that adoptive families should take with them to the country from which they are adopting their child. Even better than Jean Nelson-Erichsen and others' How To Adopt Internationally: A Guide for Agency-Directed and Independent Adoptions and Myra Alperson's The International Adoption Handbook: How To Make Foreign Adoption Work for You, this book is a sine qua non for any parent investigating the international adoption option. Highly recommended for all public libraries.

Family Wanted: Stories of Adoption. Random. 2006. c.320p. ed. by Sara Holloway. ISBN 0-8129-7547-2 [ISBN 978-0-8129-7547-2]. pap. $14.95. PSYCH

This elegant and eloquent collection of literary pieces on adoption is a reader's dream, as it beautifully and potently presents adoption in its many dimensions. Holloway (a senior editor at Granta Books) has selected numerous essays and book excerpts from literary authors who have an intimate connection to the adoption triad—adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents—and she puts forth their perspectives in two sections, "Children" and "Parents." Writers such as Paula Fox, A.M. Homes, Jeanette Winterson, Dan Chaon, Tama Janowitz, Emily Praeger, and Daniel Menaker offer insight into the realities of adoption in their own diverse and inimitable styles. Unlike other books on adoption, this collection employs the strengths and mastery of literary technique to provide welcome and informative immediacy. Readers of anthologies such as Filis Casey and Marisa Catalina Casey's Born in Our Hearts: Stories of Adoption and Lisa Meadows Garfield's For the Love of a Child: Stories of Adoption will find this sophisticated presentation indispensable. Highly recommended for public and university library collections.

Kirschner, David. Adoption: Unchartered Waters; A Psychologist's Case Studies. Juneau Pr. 2006. c.324p. bibliog. ISBN 0-9702883-2-8. pap. $18.95. PSYCH

Long Island psychologist/psychoanalyst Kirschner presents a riveting collection of case studies of notorious serial killers and mass murderers who are also adoptees, including David Berkowitz (the "Son of Sam") and Jeremy Strohmeyer, the teenager who murdered an African American girl in a casino restroom. Kirschner uses case studies to argue for his controversial theory of Adopted Child Syndrome (ACS), upon which he has built a career by maintaining that disruption of the bonding process between mother and child can precipitate a condition that mimics that of sociopathy. ACS involves anger and rage in reaction to real or imagined rejection or abandonment and manifests itself in extreme form in homicidal acts precipitated by unresolved adoption issues. While the book's tone is sometimes contentious and the argument self-serving, it deserves a place on large academic and public library shelves near Betty Jean Lifton's Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness and Nancy Newton Verrier's The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child.

Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption. South End, dist. by Consortium. Nov. 2006. c.336p. ed. by Jane Jeong Trenka & others. ISBN 0-89608-764-6. pap. $20. PSYCH

Imagine, a postmodern book on adoption. This dense assemblage of brief texts addresses the challenges of transracial and transnational adoption. Written by, and largely for, adoptees—editors Trenka and Sun Yung Shin were both born in South Korea and editor Julia Chinyere Oparah is an ethnic studies professor—it replicates the marginalization experienced by transracial adoptees as it invokes various art forms, including poetry and photography. With contributions from over 30 writers, this collection is comprehensive, offering adoption stories by people of both genders and different races and sexual orientations. Each of the six sections concentrates effectively on a different set of issues facing transracial adoptees, from "Where Are You Really From?" to "Journeys Home?" Like Trenka's previous The Language of Blood: A Memoir and Cultures of Transnational Adoption, edited by Toby Alice Volkman, this book provides profound insight into what it's like to be adopted from another race or into another nation. Recommended for university collections and large public libraries.