Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Books About Adoptive Families

  • 20 Things Adoptive Parents Need to Succeed

    20 Things Adoptive Parents Need to Succeed

    by Sherrie Eldridge

    This book is pure encouragement for adoptive parents! Most adoptive parents don’t know that their child has a different “heart language” than theirs. They need a translator, which Sherrie Eldridge becomes in her new book. In her groundbreaking first book, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their…

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  • A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption

    A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption

    Edited by Susan Ito and Tina Cervin

    Sixty short stories and poems reveal the sometimes heartbreaking, often affirming tales of adoption. Written from the point of view of birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees, this unique anthology spans nations and cultures. Editors: Susan Ito, Tina Cervin Adoptee Authors: Mi Ok Song Bruining, Lisa Buchanan,…

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  • A Living Remedy: A Memoir

    A Living Remedy: A Memoir

    by Nicole Chung

    Nicole Chung couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she’d long wanted.…

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  • Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Healthcare Professionals, and Allies

    Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Healthcare Professionals, and Allies

    by Beth Syverson and Joseph Nakao; foreword by Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao

    This book is a wake-up call to those impacted by adoption and to those who interact with them. According to preliminary results of a groundbreaking study out of Winston-Salem State University (final report targeted for release in 2025), adopted people are 36.7 times more likely…

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  • Adoption Is a Lifelong Journey

    Adoption Is a Lifelong Journey

    by Kelly DiBenedetto, Katie Gorczyca, and Jennifer Eckert

    Meet Charlie, an adoptee who opens his heart and shares what’s on his mind through various phases as he grows up in his adoptive home. As the narrator of Adoption Is a Lifelong Journey, Charlie invites readers to see the adoption journey from the perspective…

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  • Adoption Memoirs: Inside Stories

    Adoption Memoirs: Inside Stories

    by Marianne Novy

    Adoption Memoirs tells inside stories of adoption that popular media miss. Marianne Novy shows how adoption memoirs and films recount not only happy moments, but also the lasting pain of relinquishing a child, the racism and trauma that adoptees such as Jackie Kay and Jane Jeong…

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  • Adoption Reunion in the Social Media Age

    Adoption Reunion in the Social Media Age

    Edited by Laura Dennis

    This anthology gives voice to the wide experiences of adoptees and those who love them; examining the emotional, psychological and logistical effects of adoption reunion. Primarily adult adoptee voices, we also hear from adoptive parents, first moms and mental health professionals, all weighing in on…

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  • Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Allies

    Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Allies

    by Sara Easterly, Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and Lori Holden

    Adoption Unfiltered authors Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth parent), and Lori Holden (adoptive parent) interview dozens of adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, social workers, therapists, and other allies–all sharing candidly about the challenges in adoption. While finding common ground in the sometimes-contentious…

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  • Adoption, Identity, and Kinship: The Debate over Sealed Birth Records

    Adoption, Identity, and Kinship: The Debate over Sealed Birth Records

    by Katarina Wegar

    In this thoughtful book, sociologist Katarina Wegar offers a new perspective on adoption and the search debate, placing them within a social context. She argues that Americans who are embroiled in adoption controversies have failed to understand how much the debate, adoption research, and the…

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  • An-Ya and Her Diary: Reader and Parent Guide

    An-Ya and Her Diary: Reader and Parent Guide

    Edited by Diane René Christian

    Professional adoptees discuss all aspects of the novel An-Ya and Her Diary. Included are lessons on how to lead an adoption discussion, how a parent can use the novel to emotionally guide their child through the book, as well as writers who eloquently express their…

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  • Before You Were Mine: Discovering Your Adopted Child’s Lifestory

    Before You Were Mine: Discovering Your Adopted Child’s Lifestory

    by Susan TeBos and Carissa Woodwyk

    Written by an adoptive mother and an adoptee daughter, Before You Were Mine offers a unique Christian perspective on creating a Lifebook that commemorates your child’s birth story. Complete with worksheets and advice from adoptive families, you’ll find that remembering and celebrating your child’s history…

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  • Borya and the Burps: An Eastern European Adoption Story

    Borya and the Burps: An Eastern European Adoption Story

    by Joan McNamara, illustrated by Dawn Majewski

    In recent years more children have been adopted from Eastern Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet Bloc countries than from any other region of the world. Yet until now, there have been no picture books designed to tell their stories of finding a forever family…

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  • Cooper’s Lesson

    Cooper’s Lesson

    by Sun Yung Shin, illustrated by Kim Cogan

    Cooper caught his reflection in the window. Brown hair, fair skin, and some freckles. Grandmother Park always said, “Such white skin!” and Grandmother Daly always said, “What brown skin!” One cousin always teased him about being “half and half.” Cooper has had about enough of…

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  • Everything You Ever Wanted: A Memoir

    Everything You Ever Wanted: A Memoir

    by Jillian Lauren

    In her younger years, Jillian Lauren was a college dropout, a drug addict, and an international concubine in the Prince of Brunei’s harem, an experience she immortalized in in her bestselling memoir, Some Girls. In her thirties, Jillian’s most radical act was learning the steadying power of…

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  • Finding Fernanda: Two Mothers, One Child, and a Cross-Border Search for Truth

    Finding Fernanda: Two Mothers, One Child, and a Cross-Border Search for Truth

    by Erin Siegal

    The dramatic story of how an American housewife discovered that the Guatemalan child she was about to adopt had been stolen from her birth mother. Over the last decade, nearly 200,000 children have been adopted into the United States, 25,000 of whom came from Guatemala. Finding…

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  • Finding Out: Coming to Terms with Adoption

    Finding Out: Coming to Terms with Adoption

    by Paula Wilson

    Thanks to my wonderful parents, there is a story to be told about an airman and his wife. Those people, who took a chance, went through an arduous process never taken before by an American to open their hearts and home to a two-year-old orphan…

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  • Forever Fingerprints: An Amazing Discovery for Adopted Children

    Forever Fingerprints: An Amazing Discovery for Adopted Children

    by Sherrie Eldridge

    Heart-warming and playful, Forever Fingerprints shows how adoptive parents can use a common occurrence–a relative’s pregnancy–as a springboard for discussions about birth parents. Lucie is excited to feel a baby moving in her Aunt Grace’s tummy but it makes her think about her adoption story in…

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  • Frankie and Friends Talk Adoption

    Frankie and Friends Talk Adoption

    by Pam Kroskie and Marcie Keithley

    Frankie and Friends will help the youngest of adopted children and their parents navigate through the feelings often experienced but difficult to articulate. The narrator is Frankie, a lovable character who warmly validates what an adopted child may be feeling and that they are all okay!…

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  • From Home to Homeland: What Adoptive Families Need to Know before Making a Return Trip to China

    From Home to Homeland: What Adoptive Families Need to Know before Making a Return Trip to China

    Edited by Debra Jacobs, Iris Chin Ponte, and Leslie Kim Wang

    Every year, hundreds of adoptive families embark on homeland trips to China and other countries. Homeland trips offer great opportunities for helping adopted children develop a coherent narrative that makes sense of their complicated beginnings. Although the trip can be a joyful experience, it can…

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  • GreenBean: True Blue Family

    GreenBean: True Blue Family

    by Elizabeth Blake

    More than anything, GreenBean wants to feel like she belongs in her family. She does not look like them. She does not like the same things as them. So she feels like an outsider. How can she possibly belong? An Early Reader for ages 4-8,…

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  • Groundbreaking Interventions: Working with Traumatized Children, Teens and Families in Foster Care and Adoption

    Groundbreaking Interventions: Working with Traumatized Children, Teens and Families in Foster Care and Adoption

    by Jeanette Yoffe

    A book of 16 interventions designed to teach new and imaginative ways for working with traumatized children in foster care and adoption and their families. Groundbreaking Interventions provides a wide variety of play-based methodologies that have been successful in working with children over the age…

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  • In My Heart: The Adoption Story Project

    In My Heart: The Adoption Story Project

    by Alan Berks and Leah Cooper; illustrated by Becca Hart

    BACKGROUND: In My Heart: The Adoption Story Project began in 2014 in collaboration with 200+ people in the adoption community sharing their true stories with Wonderlust Productions. In 2016, the play, written and directed by Alan Berks and Leah Cooper, was performed to enthusiastic, sold-out audiences at…

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  • In Their Parents’ Voices: Reflections on Raising Transracial Adoptees

    In Their Parents’ Voices: Reflections on Raising Transracial Adoptees

    by Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda

    Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda’s In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories shared the experiences of twenty-four black and biracial children who had been adopted into white families in the late 1960s and ’70s. The book has since become a standard resource…

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  • In Their Siblings’ Voices: White Non-Adopted Siblings Talk About Their Experiences Being Raised with Black and Biracial Brothers and Sisters

    In Their Siblings’ Voices: White Non-Adopted Siblings Talk About Their Experiences Being Raised with Black and Biracial Brothers and Sisters

    by Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda

    In Their Siblings’ Voices shares the stories of twenty white non-adopted siblings who grew up with black or biracial brothers and sisters in the late 1960s and 1970s. Belonging to the same families profiled in Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda’s In Their Own…

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  • In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption

    In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption

    by Rhonda M. Roorda

    While many proponents of transracial adoption claim that American society is increasingly becoming “color-blind,” a growing body of research reveals that for transracial adoptees of all backgrounds, racial identity does matter. Rhonda M. Roorda elaborates significantly on that finding, specifically studying the effects of the…

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  • It’s Not About You: Understanding Adoptee Search, Reunion, and Open Adoption

    It’s Not About You: Understanding Adoptee Search, Reunion, and Open Adoption

    Edited by Brooke Randolph, MA, NCC, LMHC

    The title of this book can be both inflammatory and comforting; different people need to read it different ways. The reality is that the desire for information has nothing to do with parenting or personality, but an innate desire. It’s Not About You is an…

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  • Jack & Emma’s Adoptee Journey

    Jack & Emma’s Adoptee Journey

    by Pam Kroskie

    Jack & Emma’s Adoptee Journey is a children’s book that will help open the lines of communication between the adoptive parent and the adoptee. The book will also help the adoptees understand themselves and give parents the insight they need. Adoptee Author: Pam Kroskie Publication Year: 2014…

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  • Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience (3rd edition)

    Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience (3rd edition)

    by Betty Jean Lifton

    The first edition of Betty Jean Lifton’s Lost and Found advanced the adoption rights movement in this country in 1979, challenging many states’ policies of maintaining closed birth records. For nearly three decades the book has topped recommended reading lists for those who seek to…

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