Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Books About Adoptive Families

  • Miss New York Has Everything

    Miss New York Has Everything

    by Lori Jakiela

    Her aunt was a nun who popped pills and did time in Narcotics Anonymous. Her father grew up during the Depression, believed he’d be the next Frank Sinatra, and ended up working in the mills. His daughter, Lori Jakiela, spent her suburban Pittsburgh childhood watching…

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  • Parenting in the Eye of the Storm: The Adoptive Parent’s Guide to Navigating the Teen Years

    Parenting in the Eye of the Storm: The Adoptive Parent’s Guide to Navigating the Teen Years

    by Katie Naftzger

    Describing the essential skills you need to help your adopted teen to confidently face the challenges of growing up, adult adoptee and family therapist Katie Naftzger shares her personal and professional wisdom. She outlines four key goals for adoptive parents: · To move from rescuing…

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  • Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama

    Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama

    by Marianne Novy

    Explores the ways in which novels and plays portray adoption, probing the cultural fictions that these literary representations have perpetuated. Through careful readings of works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Barbara Kingsolver, Edward Albee and others, Marianne Novy reveals how fiction has contributed…

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  • Reunions in Spring: Meditations for a Holiday Table–Adoption Search & Families

    Reunions in Spring: Meditations for a Holiday Table–Adoption Search & Families

    by Suzanne Gilbert

    Reunions in Spring: Meditations for a Holiday Table–Adoption Search & Families is based on civilization’s oldest adoption memoir: the book of Exodus. It enjoys a lively retelling every spring through the literary genre of the “haggadah” used exclusively to retell the stories of Moses, his…

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  • Reunited: An Investigative Genealogist Unlocks Some of Life’s Greatest Family Mysteries

    Reunited: An Investigative Genealogist Unlocks Some of Life’s Greatest Family Mysteries

    by Pamela Slaton (with Samantha Marshall)

    In this poignant and heartwarming narrative, renowned genealogist Pamela Slaton tells the most striking stories from her incredibly successful career of reconnecting adoptees with long-lost birth parents. After a traumatic reunion with her own birth mother, Pamela Slaton realized two things: That she wanted to…

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  • Searching for Mom: A Memoir

    Searching for Mom: A Memoir

    by Sara Easterly (with Linda Easterly)

    Searching for Mom is a “disarmingly honest” mother-daughter story. Sara Easterly spent a lifetime looking for the perfect mother. As an adoptee she had difficulties attaching to her mother, struggled with her faith, lived the effects of intergenerational wounding, and felt an inherent sense of being…

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  • Seoul Story: Adoption Picture Book

    Seoul Story: Adoption Picture Book

    by Susie Lawlor; illustrated by CJ Rooney

    Seoul Story is a bilingual (English and Korean) children’s book, and loosely based autobiographical sketch of the author’s adoption from South Korea to the United States in 1970. The story introduces to children, parents and even teachers about a multicultural, transracial adoption. The book is…

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  • She Named You Donna

    She Named You Donna

    by Julie Kerton

    It’s a January morning in 1976; Julie rips the hospital bracelet from her wrist and throws it across the room. As it lands, she doesn’t know that the sound will echo through the years. But the story doesn’t begin here. In a suburb north of…

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  • Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America

    Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America

    by Stacey Patton

    Why do so many African Americans have such a special attachment to whupping children? Studies show that nearly 80 percent of black parents see spanking, popping, pinching, and beating as reasonable, effective ways to teach respect and to protect black children from the streets, incarceration,…

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  • Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity

    Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity

    by Catana Tully

    In this memoir, the author explores questions of race, adoption, and identity, not as the professor of cultural studies she became, but as the Black child of German settlers in Guatemala. Her journey into the mystery that shrouded her early years begins in the US…

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  • The Adoption Triangle (reissue)

    The Adoption Triangle (reissue)

    by Arthur D. Sorosky, M.D., Annette Baran, M.S.W., and Reuben Pannor, M.S.W.

    A classic and the first to deal with how sealed and open records affect adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents. Originally published in 1978,” … it is as true and open as the changes advocated … comprehensive, factual, forward looking, totally honest, readable and thoughtful…

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  • The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious

    The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious

    by Lori Jakiela

    Her 70-year-old, cancer-stricken mother kills snakes with a broom. Her best friend believes in psychics and the Virgin Mary. Her new neighbor steals her CDs and her aunt sneaks cheese curls into the house. After seven years in New York, Lori Jakiela gives up her…

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  • The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption

    The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption

    by Kathryn Joyce

    Adoption has long been enmeshed in the politics of reproductive rights, pitched as a “win-win” compromise in the never-ending abortion debate. But as Kathryn Joyce makes clear in The Child Catchers, adoption has lately become even more entangled in the conservative Christian agenda. The Child…

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  • The Colour of Time: A Longitudinal Exploration of the Impact of Intercountry Adoption in Australia

    The Colour of Time: A Longitudinal Exploration of the Impact of Intercountry Adoption in Australia

    Compiled by Lynelle Long for International Social Service (ISS) Australia

    This sequel to The Colour of Difference examines the path of identity formation, openness within the adoptive family, and the long-term impact on intercountry adoptees. It highlights how open discussion and dialogue within an adoptive family — along with strong encouragement and facilitation to connect with culture…

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  • The Family of Adoption: Completely Revised and Updated

    The Family of Adoption: Completely Revised and Updated

    by Joyce Maguire Pavao

    Full of wonderful stories that give insight into a wide variety of adoption issues, now revised in light of recent developments, The Family of Adoption is a powerful argument for the right kind of openness in adoption. Joyce Maguire Pavao uses her thirty years of…

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  • The Killing Closet: A Memoir

    The Killing Closet: A Memoir

    by V. L. Brunskill

    In this heartbreaking story of family, struggle, hope, and forgiveness, V.L. Brunskill tells of her life as she grows up on Long Island, New York. Vicki-lynn and her brother Peter are adopted as infants into a family defined by violence. V.L. defends her mother and…

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  • The Little Book of Adoption: A Candid Look at Life through the Eyes of Adoptees

    The Little Book of Adoption: A Candid Look at Life through the Eyes of Adoptees

    by Heather Waters; illustrated by Ellie Turner

    Have you ever wondered what goes on in the adoptees world? Here’s a candid look into the world of the adopted person through the eyes of adoptees. Adoptee Author: Heather Waters Publication Year: 2021 Critical Reviews: Adoptee Reviews:  Other Reviews:  All Bookshop and Amazon links…

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  • The Son with Two Moms

    The Son with Two Moms

    by Tony Hynes

    Tony was taken in at the age of three by Mary Hynes and Janet Simons, after being separated from his mother, who suffered from schizophrenia. After that time, he was shuffled in and out of his grandmothers home before being placed in an orphanage, where…

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  • The Truth Book: A Memoir

    The Truth Book: A Memoir

    by Joy Castro

    Adopted as a baby and raised by a devout Jehovah’s Witness family, Joy Castro is constantly reminded to tell the truth no matter what the consequences. Nevertheless, Castro finds this tenet to be the most violated. Here, in her very own Truth Book, Castro bears…

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  • Three More Words

    Three More Words

    by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

    Ashley Rhodes-Courter spent a harrowing nine years of her life in fourteen different foster homes. Her memoir, Three Little Words, captivated audiences everywhere and went on to become a New York Times bestseller. Now Ashley reveals the nuances of life after foster care: College and…

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  • To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption

    To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption

    by Arissa H. Oh

    To Save the Children of Korea is the first book about the origins and history of international adoption. Although it has become a commonplace practice in the United States, we know very little about how or why it began, or how or why it developed…

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  • Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew

    Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew

    by Sherrie Eldridge

    The voices of adopted children are poignant, questioning. And they tell a familiar story of loss, fear, and hope. This extraordinary book, written by a woman who was adopted herself, gives voice to children’s unspoken concerns, and shows adoptive parents how to free their kids…

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  • Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood

    Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood

    by Julie Ryan McGue

    In this coming-of-age memoir, set in Chicago’s western suburbs between the 1960s and ’80s, adopted twins Julie and Jenny provide their parents with an instant family. Their sisterly bond holds tight as the two strive for identity, individuality, and belonging. But as Julie’s parents continue…

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  • Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude

    Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude

    by Linda Hoye

    Linda Hoye was in her early twenties when she found herself parentless for the second time. Adopted at five months of age, her heritage, medical history, and access to information about who she was or where she came from was sealed. It was as if…

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  • We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

    We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

    by Roxanna Asgarian

    The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children–and a searing indictment of the American foster care system. On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and multiple children at the…

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  • What Is Adoption?

    What Is Adoption?

    by Jeanette Yoffe; Illustrated by Devika Joglekar

    A book appropriate for all children and families connected by adoption. Beautifully illustrated, this work provides a deeper understanding of how the adoption process works and the feelings that many children have about being adopted. Written in simple terms it aims to inspire an honest…

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  • What White Parents Should Know about Transracial Adoption: An Adoptee’s Perspective on Its History, Nuances, and Practices

    What White Parents Should Know about Transracial Adoption: An Adoptee’s Perspective on Its History, Nuances, and Practices

    by Melissa Guida-Richards

    If you’re the white parent of a transracially or internationally adopted child, you may have been told that if you try your best and work your hardest, good intentions and a whole lot of love will be enough to give your child the security, attachment,…

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  • Who Am I Really: An Adoptee Memoir

    Who Am I Really: An Adoptee Memoir

    by Damon Davis

    “Who Am I Really?” is a question many adoptees ask when they realize they have another family of genetic relation. Damon L. Davis shares his journey through life as an adoptee to becoming an adoptive parent himself. He explores his desire to find his birth…

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