From the Back Cover: More and more adoptions each year in the United States are involving either direct or indirect contact between birth and adoptive parents and their adopted children. The Open Adoption Experience helps all those considering this kind of adoption, as well as those already involved with an open adoption, to understand, negotiate, and nurture their relationship as it grows and changes along with the child.

Nationally recognized adoption experts Lois Ruskai Melina and Sharon Kaplan Roszia help demystify open adoption, describing with vivid examples all stages of the relationship—from the initial preparation for open adoption, to placement and the adjustments of the first year, through the challenges of adolescence. The Open Adoption Experience also offers a detailed discussion of the many advantages of open adoption as well as the common problems, helping adoptive and birth parents to know what to expect as the relationship unfolds and how other families have coped with the unexpected.

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About the Author: Lois Ruskai Melina is the author of Raising Adopted Children and Making Sense of Adoption and is the publisher of Adopted Child, an international newsletter on adoption. She lectures across the country and lives in Moscow, Idaho, with her husband and their two children by adoption.

Sharon Roszia is founder of Parenting Resources and coauthor of Cooperative Adoption. She has worked in the field of adoption for thirty years and performs open adoption trainings for social workers and birth parents. The mother of grown children by birth, adoption, and through long-term foster care, she lives in Tustin, California.

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By the Same Author: Raising Adopted Children: A Manual For Adoptive Parents (1986, Solstice Press); Adoption: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide (1987, Routledge); and Making Sense of Adoption: A Parent’s Guide (1989, solstice Press).

The world of adoption has changed dramatically over the past twenty years. No longer do biological parents have to say goodbye to their child forever. They now have more options when deciding the type of adoption to pursue, such as open adoption. Open adoption creates the opportunity for a special relationship between the biological parents, the adoptive parents, and the child. Open Adoption, Open Heart is an inspiring and true story, which takes the reader deeper into the feelings and emotions experienced by adoptive parents. As you read this incredible story, you will experience the joys, difficulties, and amazing victories facing adoptive couples. Russell and his wife, Jammie, invite you to share in their inspiring and heart-warming journey.

Open Arms is a true adoption story that tells of when Russell and Jammie felt called to adoption for a second time. Not only does it start a whole new chapter in the Elkins family’s story, but it also continues the ongoing journey of the relationships built during their first adoption, told in the first installment of the series, Open Adoption, Open Heart. The Elkinses are living proof of the beauty in open adoption, building intimate and powerful relationships with their children’s biological parents. You will experience all of the joys, difficulties, and victories of adoptive parents as you read this incredible story.

Foster care is more than what I ever could have imagined it to be. It has been the biggest challenge of my life and, every once in a while, the most gratifying. If I can see just a glimpse of change in any of these boys, it lets me know that I am on the right track. Knowing that I have made a very small difference in these children’s lives is better than nothing at all. After watching her own mother struggle with mental illness and a history of abuse, S. Oliphant knew that she wanted to make a difference in the lives of children dealing with those same issues. After working in a residential facility, she finally decided, despite the fact that she was already a single mother, to take in foster children. With love, patience, and the belief that every child deserves a chance, S. Oliphant set out to battle the system and change the lives of children who are often forgotten. With Open Doors, Open Hearts, we really can make the world a better place for these children.

From the Dust Jacket: This is the true and personal story of King and Rachel Baker, a childless, middle-aged couple who left the dangerously placid life of a Los Angeles suburb for one hundred acres in middle Tennessee. There they planted an apple orchard, built a house, knew seasons, experienced violent weathers and tried to know their neighbors.

Learning to cope with the unexpected in a life full of discoveries, they developed a sense of confidence, an appetite for challenge, that made them say yes to taking in two children, Marilyn and Robbie, abandoned in the neighborhood.

The often shattering, exhausting experience of learning to tangle with the children’s ferocity and their terrible needs led to deep love. A family was forged of this and, when the biological parents reconciled and decided they wanted their children back, a family was destroyed in the process of a court hearing and a judge’s decision that went against the Bakers. The result was based on the antiquated assumption in American jurisprudence that children are chattels of their biological parents and have no voice in their own welfare.

Later, against advice and entreaties, Rachel went north in a desperate, frustrating effort to find and establish a link with the children. Ultimately she returned to Tennessee and to King, and together they set about picking up the pieces of their lives, cultivating their orchard and raising their goats, always haunted by the memory of their lost children.

Happily, the orchard flourished and in time was graced by the presence of an adopted baby, Melissa, who grew to be a teenager and who thought of the title for this book.

Mrs. Baker writes under the name Rachel Maddux. Her books include Abel’s Daughter and The Green Kingdom.

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Compiler’s Note: The book inspired a CBS television documentary, titled “Who Will Save the Children?” and starring Shirley Jones and Len Cariou, which aired in December of 1978.

From the Dust Jacket: When Laura Furman was only thirteen her mother died from ovarian cancer, leaving Laura adrift in a damaged family where mourning was not allowed and remembrance itself was discouraged.

This moving and powerful memoir chronicles the difficulties that result, as the author struggles to grow up untended and, in many ways, unnoticed.

In it, Furman first recaptures for us the texture of her happy childhood. She recalls the chilling numbness that enveloped her during her mother’s illness and death, and describes in heartbreaking detail the aftermath—her unheard cries for help; her eventual self-propelled recovery; and the poignant, thought-provoking decision she made as an adult to avoid the disease that had taken her mother’s life.

Ordinary Paradise expresses in exceptionally beautiful prose the subtle interrelationships that make growing up so difficult in a family where surface appearances matter more than reality. It is an unforgettable portrait of the author’s mother—her family’s emotional center—and of the author’s father, a complex, well-meaning man whose limitations caused unintentional harm.

Even more, it is a vivid confirmation of a mother’s value to her family and of the healing that motherhood itself can provide to a wounded heart.

Ultimately, the story is one of triumph as its author strives to capture the ordinary paradise of family life that so many of us take for granted.

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About the Author: Linda Furman, a native of New York City, is the author of five previous books, including the novels Tuxedo Park and The Shadow Line and two short story collections, The Glass House and Watch Time Fly. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere; her essays in Mirabella, House & Garden, and other magazines. The founding editor of American Short Fiction, she has been the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, and has twice been awarded the Jesse Jones fiction award from the Texas Institute of Letters. She lives in Austin with her husband and son.

From the Back Cover (Revised Edition): Since the mid-1950’s, more than 30,000 Asian children have been adopted by American families. Yet little has been written about the cross-cultural experiences of these families. Oriental Children in American Homes is a comprehensive study of the cross-cultural experiences of these families. It is a result of the author’s research on cultural/psychological anthropology and cross-cultural adoption, as well as her interviews of over sixty persons (adoptive parents, their children and teachers). The book describes fundamental differences between Cunfucian and American cultures in a wide range of areas such as language, food, social relations, personality, methods of discipline, and education, and their effects on the adjustments of these families. It also explores these families’ motivations to adopt and the reactions of their relatives, friends and others to the adoptions, as well as these families’ feelings about their children’s cultural identity and the prejudice they have encountered. This is a book for adoptive parents and social workers striving to better understand the adopted children, as well as to others seeking to understand the cultural differences between the two worlds.

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About the Author: Frances Koh, a native of Korea, received a B.A. from Washington State University and attended the Boston University School of Social Work. A former adoption worker, she is a publishing executive as well as a freelance writer. Oriental Children in American Homes is her first book.

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By the Same Author: Adopted From Asia: How It Feels to Grow Up in America (1993, EastWest Press) and A China Adoption Story: Mommy, Why Do We Look Different? (2000, Azalea Books).

From the Back Cover: Orphan care is more than just adoption. At the heart of orphan care is grace. Grace that flows from Christ’s redemptive work on the Cross. Grace that reconciles us with God. Grace that we extend through the care of orphans and others.

The needs are urgent. Who will stand up for these tens of millions of children around the world? Or closer to home, who will step up to provide loving, Christian care for children in America’s foster care system?

With openness and integrity, Rick and Tony speak from firsthand experience. Orphanology details practical ways to get involved such as:

• Assisting adoptive parents in down-to-earth fashion

• Raising awareness of the crisis in orphan and foster care

• Developing a fund to assist potential adoptions

• Hosting orphans for a summer

• Underwriting an orphanage

• Starting an orphan care ministry in the local church

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About the Author: Rick Morton, along with his wife, Denise, played an integral role in the cofounding of Promise 139, and international orphan-hosting ministry. He serves as discipleship pastor at Temple Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and has numerous youth ministry publications to his credit.

Pastor, professor, and father of five, Tony Merida has quickly become a leading voice in the growing movement for adoption and orphan care. His passion for the fatherless is evident through his writing, teaching, and speaking.

Tony and Rick are living examples of James 1:27—they have a combined eight adopted children between their families.

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By the Same Author: KnowOrphans: Mobilizing the Church for Global Orphanology (2014).

From the Dust Jacket: Experienced biographer Jeffrey Meyers delves into the complex personal history of the man whose visionary work gave us the great anti-utopias of twentieth-century literature. Meyers draws on a close study of the new edition of George Orwell’s Complete Works, interviews with his family and friends, and research into unpublished material in the Orwell Archive in London to shed new light on this most unusual literary figure.

A child of the waning British Empire, Orwell came to reject the stifling class system of his birth, and through his writing forged a new social consciousness that continues to engage modern intellectual thought. Meyers’s work also reveals the human failings of this creative visionary—his childhood insecurities, his political dilemmas, and his conflicted relationships with women. The Orwell who emerges from this book is a darker—but distinctly more nuanced—portrait of the legendary figure.

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About the Author: Jeffrey Meyers, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, has written biographies of such literary greats as D.H. Lawrence, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

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Compiler’s Note: From Chapter 12, “Fatherhood & Eileen’s Death, 1944-1945”: “After eight years of marriage, it seemed clear that they were not going to have a child of their own and Orwell finally persuaded Eileen to adopt one. Gwen O’Shaughnessy, who’d already adopted a little girl, knew a patient who’d had a baby boy. He was born in May 1944, the result of a wartime affair with a Canadian soldier, and his mother wanted to give him up for adoption. ... They named the child Richard Horatio Blair.” (pp. 227-28).

From the Back Cover: This is a personal and touching story of one women’s journey to find a child.

Tamra spent eight years pursuing a child through fertility clinics without success. Her body would not cooperate and give her the child she wanted. The need for a child was so overwhelming they turned to adoption. Their adoption journey from start to finish took three years, while reading the story you will learn of the many pitfalls they had to overcome. The story has a happy ending with the adoption of their daughter.

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About the Author: Tamra Barton is not a doctor or a nurse, she just lived through the trials of infertility and adoption.

Before finding her niche in writing, she did a lot of different jobs. She owned her own barbershop for 12 years and sold it after Katie was placed in their home.

She started writing The Other Choice while sitting in the barbershop between customers. After Katie was adopted she finished the manuscript and searched for a publisher.

Her days were filled with taking care of her family, writing novels, teaching Sunday school, and riding her scooter around town.

This book tells the stories of nine families’ journeys to adopt Chinese children. Each absorbing account describes the unique hills and valleys involved in the process and how it has forever changed and enriched their lives. Ride along with each family as they traverse the emotional spectrum from fear and frustration to bliss and joy as they meet their children and begin the miracle of forming a forever-family through adoption. About the Author: D.L. Fuller lives in Little Elm, TX, with his wife, LuAnn, and his daughter, Julianna. He is a tax manager for a microchip company located in Carrolton, TX. In his spare time, he enjoys playing softball, writing, and spending time with his family. He is a member of the North Texas Chapter of Families with Children from China (FCCNT). He is the author of the children’s picture book, Who Are My Real Parents?. He regularly attends activities with the Playful Pandas supper club in Denton, TX. Contributors: Marybeth Lambe, Anna Gray, Gayle Kamen-Weinstein, MaLeesa D. Meyers, Susan Beth Morgan, Sue Casseday, Lynn Miller, and Joanne Swift.

If you’re lucky, your community offers a course on adoptive parenting. If not, you can still receive the important information that such a course provides. Our Child is the instructor’s manual of a four-week course for expectant adoptive parents. It covers baby care (including the possibility of adoptive nursing), finding a doctor, dealing with family and friends, preparing siblings, and many other topics of interest to new adoptive parents. Since, as pre-adoptive parents, you often don’t know exactly when your child will join your family, it helps to have this book available just in case. It is a unique resource.

Adoption Training for Parents and Professionals. Adoptive parents commit incredible resources of time, money and emotions over such a long period that it is no wonder they can be seduced into believing they have “crossed the finish line” when placement finally occurs. This new training examines how the addition of a child by adoption affects you family to its very core. Visit our website at www.AdoptionTrainingOnline.com for information about Certified Training for The Hague International Adoption requirements and Continuing Education Credits for Professionals.

Our Children From Latin America is a warm and engaging book for those people who are considering or have already adopted from Latin America. It is the fascinating account of the author’s personal experiences with adoption. In addition to her own story, the book covers topics such as the health of Latin American children, emphasizing your child’s cultural heritage and what to tell a child about adoption.

From the Publisher: Parents record every milestone—from the first smile to the first day at school—in a child’s baby book for posterity. Thanks to best-selling author Judith Levy, adoptive parents can now express their joy and love for a child in a baby book created especially for them. Our Chosen Child omits the traditional space for recording details about the pregnancy, labor, and delivery, highlighting instead the special preparations adoptive parents make and the excitement and anticipation they feel. In Our Chosen Child, adoptive parents can record family history and all the milestones of childhood through high school graduation. Additionally, Our Chosen Child includes the milestones that an adoptive family achieves. A page entitled “Waiting for You” acknowledges the many steps along the journey to becoming an adoptive family, such as completing a home study and getting references. On the page entitled “When We First Saw You,” parents can capture the special moment when they first meet their intended child, whether as a newborn or as a five-year-old. The happy memories of the day the adoption is finalized are recorded on the “Adoption Day” page. Each page features original poetry by Judith Levy, such as this loving dedication: “You had a journey to make, A trip to come through, To parents who were praying, And waiting for you.” Judy Pelikan’s tender illustrations grace every page, making this book a beautiful keepsake. All adoptive parents will want to complete this treasury of memories for their own chosen child.

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About the Author: Author Judith Levy and artist Judy Pelikan began their successful collaboration in 1983 with Grandmother Remembers: A Written Heirloom for My Grandchild, which sold over two million copies and was number two on The New York Times best-seller list. Since then, they have had many best-selling books, including Grandfather Remembers (1986), Mom Remembers (1990), and Dad Remembers (1993). A grandmother of four, Judith lives in Boca Raton, FL. Her youngest grandchild is adopted. Judy lives in Sugar Hill, NH.

Once John Rop III, became a foster parent, it seemed he saw other foster families all around him: in the grocery store, at the mall, at church, and at the park. He wondered how he’d never noticed them before. It made him realize how many people might be just as ignorant to the needs of children—and to the joys of adoptive and foster care—as he once was. Rop’s new book, Our Foster and Adoptive Experience, tells the uplifting tale of his evolving family. As the biological father of one child and the stepfather of three, Rop didn’t take lightly the decision to expand his already large family. The Rops’ choice to serve as foster parents to many children, and eventually as adoptive parents to three, resulted in an exceptionally rewarding experience. Rop doesn’t claim it’s always been easy. The period of adjustment for both parent and child can be rocky. Rop’s story, however, proves that if everyone sticks it out, the benefits far outweigh the challenges.

On September 27, 1995, Janet Furbeck read an article about the deplorable conditions endured by the children living in Eastern European orphanages. Shocked and saddened by the story, Janet and her husband, Michael, decided to try to adopt one of those babies. The Furbecks contacted From the Heart Adoption Services and soon found themselves in the middle of an intricate bureaucratic process that frequently left them frustrated and anxious. There were no less than thirty forms that had to be completed and notarized, and the Russian government’s ever-changing policies didn’t help. Then their wait for their fingerprint clearance from the FBI was extended by the shutdown of the U.S. government, which occurred not only because of the lack of a federal budget, but also thanks to the Blizzard of ’96! The Furbecks received photographs and a videotape of a little girl named Natalya. Their growing love for this child, combined with their faith in God and the encouragement and help of the dedicated owners of the adoption agency, kept them determined to see the adoption through. Finally, on April 5, 1996, the Furbecks left for Russia with three other couples who were also adopting children. The trip to the orphanage in Krasnodar was an adventure in itself, but the Furbecks took everything in stride and remained optimistic. When they held Jill Natalya Furbeck, now thirteen months old, for the first time, their hearts soared and they knew this was what they had waited for. Janet and Michael Furbeck have experienced a joy which few can boast. The story of Jill’s adoption is certain to tug at the heart and encourage others who may be considering taking one of these children into their lives and hearts. About the Author: Janet Furbeck is employed by the Mental Health Association of Albany County, New York, and has been for fourteen years. She has a degree in human services/social work and is the program director of a psychosocial club. Mrs. Furbeck has served on the Women of Round Lake Improvement Society and the Social Justice Committee for St. Francis deSales Church. A devoted mother and wife, she enjoys camping, learning about the culture of Russia and Poland, spending time with her family and friends, and celebrating life. After adopting Jill Natalya Furbeck from Krasnodar, Russia, in 1996. Mrs. Furbeck and her husband, Michael, also a son, Benjamin Michailovich Furbeck, from Kursk, Russia, on Christmas Day 1997.

This is not a book. It may look and feel like any other book you’ve held in your hands and plopped on your nightstand—but it’s not a book. It’s a blog in print. A book should be a fluid continuous stream of prose, with a climactic arch and a subsequent dénouement. This printed blog doesn’t really have those things. It has blog posts, posted comments, and emails in chronological order. It does tell a story, true—but it’s neither edited, nor polished. This is an in-the-moment angst of a first-time mother going through a Russian adoption. A memoir would be told in the wise voice of a narrator who’s been through the process successfully. This blog is told in the frantic voice of a chick who had no idea what was going on. It’s not a book, but it’s our story. About the Author: Faydra Stratton is a graduate of the University of Florida and the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, where she received her MFA in fiction. She wrote a blog to keep friends and family connected with the daily ups and downs of their adoption journey of Kaden, as well as to help others with the adoption process. Faydra decided to print it, primarily as a keepsake for Kaden. Faydra, Kevin, and Kaden recently left Wilmington for Longview, TX, where Kevin is studying missionary aviation. This family has many adventures ahead of them! Faydra has written two book-length fiction projects, a novel, and a collection of stories. See samples of her fiction at: www.faydrastratton.com.

From the Back Cover: When Cherry Willoughby looked into the eyes of her beautiful three-year-old adopted daughter, her heart melted. She was sure that the family’s love could heal the wounds of her daughter’s deeply troubled past. How terrifyingly and devastatingly wrong she was.

From the Dust Jacket: Adopting an older child is “not for wimps,” as one social worker so aptly puts it. Kids who are preschool-age and older come with histories, fully formed personalities, and anger over what they have lost. They grieve, misbehave, and may feel like “houseguests” for a long time.

But they also bring joy, laughter, and great resilience. They play, love, and remind their parents of what’s truly important—a family of your own.

In Our Own, dozens of adoptive families “tell it like it is” about the joys and challenges of adopting an older child. Their stories are backed up by thorough research, interviews with professionals, and opinions from adults who were adopted as children. The book covers both domestic and international adoption, and adoption of children from preschool age through puberty.

It answers the questions most frequently asked by parents-to-be: Do I have what it takes to adopt and parent an older child? How do I choose an agency and find a child to adopt? How can I tell if my son is grieving and what can I do to comfort him?

Why is my daughter hoarding food? How can I help my child bond to us? What should I do when my son throws a tantrum? Should I change my daughter’s name? Should I let my son call his birthmother? How can I teach my child to cope with racism? Is there a way to help my daughter learn English faster? How can I get my son the help he needs in school? Why doesn’t my kid want to go off to college? My daughter is too friendly with strangers; does she have attachment disorder? How do I choose a therapist?

Filled with compassion, humor, and common sense, this is the essential handbook for anyone adopting an older child.

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About the Author: Trish Maskew is the mother of three, including two boys who were adopted at ages five and nine. She and her husband also have been foster parents. She is completing a degree in behavioral sciences. She and her family live in Tennessee.

“My husband and I are adopting. Does anyone know what that means?” There was more than one answer to that question for Kristen and Dan, and this remarkable story takes you through their adoption journey from beginning to end. From fertility issues to two successful adoptions, Kristen eloquently sheds new light on each step of the adoption process. With an inviting and friendly style of prose, she guides readers through the heartache of having to let a child go and onto the joy of holding her child for the very first time. An honest portrayal of a different road to parenthood, this story affirms the real blessing that adoption can be.

From the Dust Jacket: This is the moving story of an unusual family of three. A family that started out as a childless couple in England and, thousands of miles across the ocean, a baby whose Guatemalan birth mother was unable to provide for him. It is the story of meeting insurmountable obstacles—both to having their own birth child and to adopting domestically—so that instead Dominic and Alex embark on a frustrating, lengthy, emotional but ultimately victorious journey on the road to intercountry adoption. After considering a number of other countries with abandoned and relinquished children, they narrow their search to Guatemala in Central America. For convenience, they think of their future adoptive son as “José,” until such time as they learn the name of the little one to be handed over to them. Then one day a baby born to a young mother is indeed referred to them for adoption ... and his name is José! Was a child ever more longed for, fought for, or waited for with such huge anticipation? Alex Bemrose’s candid account of the highs and lows—more lows than highs, she confesses—in her and Dominic’s ultimately triumphant quest to bring little José home to England will leave you without much doubt!

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About the Author: Alex Bemrose was born in London and studied at Royal Holloway College, University of London, where she attained a BA Honours degree in History. She worked for four years in the ski industry, spending time living in the French Alps, followed by twenty-two years in corporate event management, running her own company for the last thirteen years, with clients in the financial sector including HSBC and Morgan Stanley. She closed the company after the arrival of her adopted son in order to be a full-time mother. She has also been involved in voluntary work for a spinal-injury charity, The Back-Up Trust, and is currently involved with the Shooting Star Children’s Hospice. She lives on the outskirts of London with her husband, Dominic, and their son, José.

While making a documentary film in Michoacan, Mexico, the Gordons met a 21-year-old Tarascan Indian boy, Pablo Velazquez, and brought him home to California to attend the University of California at Berkeley. Afterwards he returned to Mexico to share his knowledge.

From the Publisher: Are they all yours? Do you run a day care? Is this a youth group? Why didn’t you want to have any children of your own? These are questions faced often by parents of large families, but especially by adoptive parents. What makes the Fletcher family’s story unique is that their twelve children all came home within twelve years. Five children are Hispanic. One is biracial. Two are Asian. Four are Caucasian. Ten are from four state foster care systems from across the United States, two are from a Guatemalan orphanage. At the writing of this book, they range in age from 10 to 22, but they arrived between the ages of 9 months and 12 years. Together the family has confronted (and in some cases resolved) a myriad of challenges. Each is a unique individual with special gifts and contributions to make to the world. This book is the account, with helpful wisdom along the way, of an adoptive family’s first twelve years, recounting how each child was claimed. Two Adults. Twelve Children. One Family.

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About the Author: Bart Fletcher, a United Methodist pastor, is an intentional and attentive father. He is the family’s nurturer, who continues to learn what it means to be a non-anxious presence in the lives of his children.

Claudia Fletcher, an adoption professional, is the family disciplinarian, using techniques she learned as a college administrator combined with years of practical knowledge gained from parenting in the third degree.

Together they share the roller coaster ride of parenting children with special needs who have a history of abuse or neglect. They combine a sense of humor, a strong faith, and unconditional love to face their daily challenges. They are the founders of Third Degree Parenting, LLC, an organization whose mission is to empower the written and spoken work of ordinary people doing extraordinary things to encourage, educate and strengthen parents.

He had been dead for eight years! Was there any way to repair their damaged relationship now? His mother desperately wanted to try. Her growing need for communication in their truncated relationship pushed her to start a diary to her dead son. In it, she tried to fill in the gaps, initiate conversations that never happened, continue conversations that were unfinished, tell him about her life that he hadn’t wanted to know, and attempted to listen to him as the child he had been, and the adult he had grown into. Interracial adoption in the 1970s, divorce, guilt and abandonment, homosexuality, HIV-AIDS, death in one’s prime—all were parts of their complicated mother-son relationship.

From Booklist: McElderry’s story of her adoption of two Romanian orphans is certainly not a romanticized one. Accompanied by her physician-spouse, wheelchair-bound McElderry traveled from their home in Alaska only to arrive in Romania and find that adoptions from orphanages were closed because their directors worried that international gifts would cease and they would be out of work. Baby marketing continued in private adoptions by poverty-stricken parents and social outcasts, including Gypsies. Highly critical of the U.S. government, embassy personnel, and distortions by American media, McElderry speaks bluntly of the shysters (Romanian and American) and fondly of the people who assisted her and many others who feel compelled to care for Romanian children. — Denise Perry Donavin

From the Dust Jacket: Mary Poppins has become familiar to generations of children all over the world as the quintessential English nanny. What is less well known is that she was the invention of a young Australian, P.L. (Pamela Lyndon) Travers.

Born in Queensland in 1899, P.L. Travers began her career as an actress and journalist. She set sail for England in 1924, becoming variously an essayist, theatre and film critic, scholar of folklore and myth, and friend of writers George (A.E.) Russell and W.B. Yeats. Her first Mary Poppins book, published in 1934, was an instant success and was followed by five more. In 1964 the Walt Disney classic film turned the magical nanny into a household name.

The extraordinary life of this arcane Australian talent has now been unearthed by journalist Valerie Lawson. In Out of the Sky She Came, Valerie Lawson captures the love and mysticism and magic that shaped P.L. Travers’s life and gave birth to the Mary Poppins books. And she relates the realities of this life to Mary Poppins’s literary persona—who was not the cheery, saccharine figure of the Disney film but tart and rude, plain and vain. That was her charm—that and her mystery. The same could be said of her creation.

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About the Author: Valerie Lawson, an acclaimed and award-winning journalist, was the foundation editor of “Weekend Review” in the Australian Financial Review in 1979, the foundation editor of Good Weekend in 1984, and the editor of the National Times on Sunday in 1987. Since 1990 she has been a feature writer for the Sydney Morning Herald (and from 1995 to 1996 its arts editor). Her previous books are Connie Sweetheart (1990) and The Allens Affair (1994). In 1997 she was a Walkley Award finalist for criticism and comment, and in 1998 won.

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Compiler’s Note: Pamela Travers was the stage name adopted by Helen Lyndon Goff when she worked as an actress. Travers was her father’s first name, and she thought Pamela a “pretty” name that “flowed” with Travers, according to Lawson. The Mary Poppins books appeared under the pseudonym P.L. Travers when her publisher refused to allow her to publish the first book as “Anonymous.”

Travers adopted her son, whom she named Camillus, from Ireland when she was 40. She never told him of his status as an adoptee; he only discovered that he had been adopted, and that he had, among a number of other biological siblings, a fraternal twin brother when this brother contacted him when he was seventeen.

Episodes from Travers’ early life were also depicted, in flashbacks, in the 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks, which focused primarily on Walt Disney’s twenty-year campaign to obtain the rights to adapt the books for his eponymous movie.

Do you know a child who plays too rough, is uncoordinated, hates being touched, is ultra-sensitive (or unusually insensitive) to noise or sensations of heat and cold? Many pediatricians and other experts are beginning to recognize a link between some of these apparently unrelated behavior patterns. Children with perfectly normal “far senses” (such as sight and hearing) may have, because of a poorly integrated nervous system, serious problems with their “near senses,” including touch, balance, and internal muscle sensation. It’s called Sensory Integration Dysfunction, or SI. The announcement of yet another new syndrome is bound to raise skeptical eyebrows—and with good reason. (How do we know which child really has SI, and which one just happens to share some of the same symptoms?) Author Carol Stock Kranowitz argues convincingly, however, that for some children SI is a real disorder, and that it is devastating partly because it so often looks like nothing so much as “being difficult.” And, whatever the scientific status of SI, Kranowitz carefully details many routines and remedies that will help children—and the parents of children—who exhibit the behaviors described. This book is a must-read for all doctors, pediatricians, and (perhaps especially) childcare workers. — Richard Farr