From the Back Cover: There are tens of millions of adoptable children around the world waiting for a family—a mommy, a daddy, sisters and brothers, grandparents. Maybe a little girl or boy is waiting for you.

Do you feel like God is calling you to expand your family through adoption? Have you thought about adopting, but the process seemed too overwhelming and expensive? In Successful Adoption: A Guide for Christian Families, veteran author and adoptive mom Natalie Nichols Gillespie walks you step-by-step through the process of adoption—from deciding whether adoption is the right choice for your family to working through your fears, choosing the right agency, preparing the paperwork, and bringing your child home. Find out what blessings God brings to adoptive families, and learn the ins-and-outs of domestic and international adoption. Inside these pages, you’ll discover all this and much more:

• How much adoption costs and how the IRS will help you pay for it

• What questions to ask to find an agency or attorney you can trust

• Where the adoptable children are

• What paperwork has to be done and how you get started

• How long it really takes before you can bring your child home

• What the differences are between domestic and international adoption

• How you can help orphans at home and around the world, even if you are not adopting

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About the Author: Natalie Nichols Gillespie is the mom and stepmom of seven, including Amberlie Joy FuShuang Gillespie, adopted from Chongqing, China in 2006. She enjoys writing practical books such as The Stepfamily Survival Guide and Five-Star Living on a Two-Star Budget to equip families. Natalie lives with her family in beautiful Weeki Wachee, Florida.

From the Dust Jacket: Successful Adoption is a comprehensive and realistic look at how to adopt, written with the belief that couples can find a baby. A valuable tool in understanding all of the options available to adoptive parents, Successful Adoption is a step-by-step guide to finding and raising a child.

All of the various methods for finding and adopting a child are explained: how to adopt through a state agency, how to proceed in an independent adoption, special needs adoption, and foreign adoption. Here is everything prospective parents need to know, from first contacts to final papers. In addition, the book helps parents analyze whether or not adoption is a realistic option and, if it is, what kind of child they would be most interested in adopting.

Successful Adoption also guides families after adoption. It explains to adoptive parents what to expect from their child, how to tell your child about adoption, how to handle unsettling remarks from relatives and friends, and how to deal with school authorities.

In addition to state-by-state information on adoption and listings of regional adoption centers and foreign adoption agencies, there is an extensive index and a source and reference guide.

No other book offers this comprehensive analysis of adoption and adoption procedures. An invaluable aid for anyone considering adoption.

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About the Author: Jacqueline Hornor Plumez graduated with honors from Bucknell University. Prior to obtaining her Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University, she worked as a government analyst for five years, evaluating programs and policies for their economic and social impact. Dr. Plumez is currently in private practice, working with adults and families. She lives in New York with her husband and two children, and she frequently lectures on contemporary issues.

From the Back Cover: Is now the right time for me to adopt?
How can I honor my child’s culture and ethnicity?
What do I need to know about trauma and parenting a child from the system?

Filled with inspirational quotes and vignettes of the adoption journey, and candid real life illustrations, this book calms the gnawing fears and doubts parents experience along the way of adopting from foster care, and sets them on the right road for the future!

Written by Certified Parenting Coach and Parent Educator, presenter and adoptive parent, Successful Foster Care Adoption: Emotional Journey, Uncommon Love prepares, educates and inspires by directing readers along an informational and inspirational highway. Deborah Beasley draws on her thirteen years of experience to address each topic with practical and substantive information aimed directly at helping those wondering if foster care adoption is right for them.

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About the Author: Deborah A. Beasley ACPI CCPF is the founder and director of Together At Last Family Support in New Jersey. Deborah has been working with families since 2008. She is an experienced parenting coach and educator, author, presenter, and has trained and served as a child mental health and special needs family advocate on several boards from 2007 to the present. Deborah is a graduate of The Academy for Coaching Parents International and specializes in adoption and special needs, with a focus on guiding families with children with mental and emotional health needs to healing and success.

An American couple become parents for two Vietnamese boys, one handicapped, who fled war-ravaged Vietnam by boat. Each member of the family tells the story from his or her own viewpoint, in alternating chapters, providing an uncommonly candid picture of feelings, disappointments and hopes.

From the Dust Jacket: Suits Me is the biography of a now notorious jazz musician named Billy Tipton, who grew up as Dorothy Tipton in Oklahoma City and Kansas City but lived as a man from the time she was nineteen until she died at age seventy-four. Billy Tipton’s death in Spokane, Washington, made news all over the world, not because he was celebrated as a musician but because the scale of his deception—he had been “married” to five women and had reared several adopted children—and the scarcity of ready explanations endowed the skimpy available facts with the aura of myth.

But locked away in Billy’s office closet lay files of clippings and photographs documenting the transformation of Billy from she to he, as well as a legacy of annotated comic routines, musical arrangements, and program notes. These revealed to Diane Wood Middlebrook how Billy scattered clues and riddles night after night about the drag she wore. These hints were so bold that they helped conceal Billy’s secrets.

With brio and pathos, Suits Me tells the life story of this brilliant deceiver. who lived and loved in two skins, one of each sex. Billy’s loves and ambitions and his everyday behavior are revealed in the voices of those who knew him: his “wives,” his family, his musical sidemen, and those who encountered him on the road as he traveled with the Billy Tipton Trio from town to town. bandstand to bandstand, gig to gig, during the jazz decades.

A masterpiece of skillful detection and perceptive storytelling, Suits Me not only casts a sympathetic eye across the spectrum oi the sexes but chronicles tank-town show business over a period of fifty years. Illustrated with photographs, this book also explores, in words, music, history, and psychology, any number of mysteries about the American family.

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About the Author: Diane Wood Middlebrook is the author of several volumes of poetry and criticism as well as the prizewinning bestseller Anne Sexton: A Biography, nominated for the National Book Award and a finalist for the Book Critics Circle Award. The recipient of many fellowships and honors, she is a professor of English at Stanford University, where she has also served as the director of the Center for Research on Women.

From the Back Cover: Don C. Talayesva of Oraibi, Arizona, the Sun Chief, was an individual caught between two cultures. He was born, and reared until he was ten, as a Hopi Indian, and then trained until twenty to be an American citizen. Although torn between two worlds, he returned to Hopiland, renounced Christianity, entered into tribal adulthood, joined secret societies, and worshiped the rain gods in elaborate rituals and dances. For Leo Simmons, a white man who was adopted as a clan brother, he finally wrote the story of his life in all its extraordinary detail. Dr. Simmons prepared this story for publication and has added a valuable introduction, supplemented and brought up to date by Robert V. Hine.

From the Dust Jacket: Time to tune into “The Jack Benny Show”! From 1934 to 1965—on radio, and later TV—millions of Americans kept that date with Jack: and it always left them laughing.

This sparkling memoir is the story of Jack’s life, told both in his own inimitable words and in the nostalgic reminiscences of his daughter, Joan. Using never-before-seen material from Jack’s unfinished autobiography, SUNDAY NIGHTS AT SEVEN is packed with classic Benny comedy routines and entertaining anecdotes about everyone from Cary Grant to Marilyn Monroe to Harry Truman. The book reveals the real Jack Benny, tells what it was like to grow up as his daughter, and paints a glittering portrait of Hollywood during its heyday and the Golden Ages of radio and television.

Most of all, it’s having Jack in your home once again—this time, talking about his own life. Let him take you back to the good old days of vaudeville when, as a struggling violin-with-joke act, he first met the Marx Brothers. “They closed the show because nobody could follow them.”

Listen as he tells you about his audacious 1934 radio debut when “Jell-O, folks, this is Jack Benny” was heard on the NBC Blue network. His sponsors went into shock, but listeners bought Jell-O in record numbers, and Jack’s star—and style—was born.

Sunday Nights at Seven bangs back the Jack Benny we remember so well: the deadpan, irascible cheapskate who played the violin (to everyone’s dismay), insisted he was thirty-nine (to everyone’s consternation), and fought a long-running battle of wits with Fred Allen that ended in an actual boxing match at Madison Square Garden. Jack’s on-air character was so popular that most folks assumed it was the real thing—like the hatcheck girl who returned his ample tip, begging him to “leave me with some illusions.”

And Sunday Nights at Seven introduces you to the off-stage Jack Benny, a man who was generous to a fault. Throughout his career, he pampered his wife (“she’s the only one I’ve ever had”), doted on his daughter and later his grandchildren—and was equally generous with new talent and lesser stars.

Here is Jack, entertaining the troops with Ingrid Bergman, hobnobbing with Laurence Olivier, making movies with Carole Lombard. And here is Joan, growing up with the kids of Burns and Allen and Barbara Stanwyck.

Featuring a hilarious foreword by Jack’s lifelong chum George Burns, thirty-two pages of rare and wonderful photos, and remembrances by friends like Claudette Colbert and Ronald Reagan, Sunday Nights at Seven is a delightful journey into Hollywood’s glamorous, star-studded past—and a visit from an old friend that will warm your heart and bring a smile to your face.

AN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE LITERARY GUILD AND THE DOUBLEDAY BOOK CLUB

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About the Author: Joan Benny is a writer and lecturer on the history of humor in film. The mother of four, she resides in both New York City and Beverly Hills.

From the Back Cover: “We can’t expect people to understand adoption unless we tell them what it’s like.”

—adoptive parent

A GUIDE TO ADOPTION SUPPORT

“This ... booklet says it all. For those of us who have adopted, Pat Holmes puts into words what we wish we had available during our ‘waiting period’ and after the child arrived ... prospective parents might consider buying several for relatives, friends and neighbors ... Her booklet will make it easy for those around us to properly and effectively support us before, during and after adoption. It is well done.”

—Connie Anderson, editor, OURS Magazine

FOR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS

“I’m recommending this book to everyone. Good intentions just aren’t enough. I made so many mistakes when our friends adopted. Now I feel ready for their next adoption. I understand how they feel and what they really need...”

RELATIVES,

“I probably would have blown it with my daughter and (adopted) grandchildren. If people want to help adoptive families and let them know they are loved, Supporting an Adoption is a must to read carefully before a child is adopted...”

ADOPTING PARENTS,

“Supporting an Adoption is unique. The finest writing we’ve read that covers support of the family and really explains adoption. It gave us so much to think about...”

COUNSELORS, EDUCATORS

“Written with sensitivity and insight. I wish I had this 5 years ago when | began casework. An excellent tool for all people, professional and lay...”

AND EVERYONE WHO CARES...

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About the Author: Pat Holmes is an adoptive mother who has professional experience in research work. She is also a free-lance writer and community education Instructor.

Pat and her husband, Steve, joined the South Puget Sound Adoptive Parents’ support group in October 1980. “The group’s support and activities have been invaluable to us, first as prospective adoptive parents and then when each of our children arrived. I know our family will always be involved with a support group, no matter where we are. Spreading the word about adoption and sharing our experiences with other adoptive families is something we all enjoy.

“Researching and writing Supporting an Adoption was a natural extension of being a member of a support group, because it explains to non-members what it’s like to adopt and how they, too, can offer help and understanding to adopting families.”

From the Publisher: This is a “What to Expect” parenting book for new and current foster moms and dads who are raising their foster children. This book is all about empowerment. By empowering our foster parents to be more successful, we empower our foster children to heal and increase their future chances of succeeding in life, thereby breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect from their biological family. A change in one family changes the lives of its subsequent generations. There are about 700,000 children in the that are involved with the foster are system each year the 200,000 get to go back home, leaving the rest to foster parents who are then expected to pick up the pieces and heal their hearts. How can this be done successfully and what skill-set is absolutely required? These answers are provided in practical terms and on-hands skills training. This book is both a manual and a reference guide for coping as a foster parent.

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About the Author: Dr. Kalyani Gopal is a licensed clinical psychologist with over 25 years experience in diverse clinical settings. Dr. Gopal began her doctoral training in clinical psychology in Vanderbilt University and completed her training at Alliant University. Her interests are in child sexual abuse assessment and treatment, expert witness testimony, long term sequelae of child sexual abuse, juvenile delinquency, parenting, psychopathology, attachment issues, foster care assessment, adjustment, and training, media relations, and immigrant experiences. Dr. Gopal is on the Lake County Child Protection Team, Lake County Child Fatality Team and was the recipient of the Outstanding Service to Lake County award in 2002. She currently holds the position as President/Clinical Director, Mid-America Psychological and Counseling Services in Merrillville, IN, and provides clinical supervision to three outpatient clinics in Indiana and Illinois. Dr. Gopal is an international speaker on Child Sexual Abuse and has conducted workshops across the country and internationally on the Impact of Child Sexual Abuse. Dr. Gopal is the President-Elect of the Clinical Psychology of Women (Section IV), Division of Clinical Psychology (12), American Psychological Association and Illinois psychological Association Statewide Advocate Coordinator for severe mental illness. Dr. Gopal is also the co-author of Americanization of New Immigrants.

From the Dust Jacket: “Surrogate mother” is a new term that has entered the language. Specifically, it means a woman who contracts, usually with an infertile couple, and is impregnated (by artificial insemination) with the sperm of the fertile husband. When the child is born, the surrogate mother immediately hands it over to the biological father and his wife for legal adoption.

Surrogate mothering is a concept that has stirred a great deal of nationwide controversy. Noel P. Keane, a Dearborn, Michigan attorney who has become the most important national legal expert on the subject, and Dennis L. Breo, National Affairs Editor for the American Medical Association, have written the first definitive, comprehensive book on every aspect of this provocative subject.

In a lively and dramatic style, Messrs. Keane and Breo introduce the reader to the different types of people (ranging from two spouses with Ph.D.s to a very religious couple) who have already had a child through the surrogate method, and those who are expecting one. Also included are intimate and revealing interviews with the surrogate mothers themselves. The authors discuss the varying motives of the adoptive couples and their surrogates, the problems—legal and others—that they encountered along the way, and how these problems were handled.

There is also in-depth examination of the positions of various legal, medical, and religious groups on the surrogate-mother procedure, and there is a review of the enthusiastic responses of many average people to the possibilities opened up by this new option for childless couples.

The authors then present a detailed section that is a guide to all the legal, medical, psychological, and moral questions faced by an adoptive couple and surrogate mother, and offers practical suggestions for answering many of them.

Insightfully and compassionately written, The Surrogate Mother is a ground-breaking examination of this new medico-legal opportunity for infertile couples to have the children they want.

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About the Author: Noel P. Keane counsels couples seeking a surrogate, potential surrogates seeking an adoptive couple, attorneys seeking more information on this concept, and medical personnel wishing to publicize surrogate mothering as a hope for infertile couples.

Dennis L. Breo, in addition to his work for the AMA, has reported on major medical stories for the past ten years, and has written numerous articles for national magazines and newspapers on surrogate mothering. He is the winner of three Chicago Headline Club Awards for Exemplary Journalism.

“What was the likelihood my adopted daughter would have my father’s hazel eyes and my mother’s mental illness?” In this fiercely candid memoir, Dr. Pruchno, a scientist widely acclaimed for her research on mental illness and families, shows how mental illness threatened to destroy her own family. Not once, but twice. As a child, she didn’t understand her mother’s episodes of crippling sadness or whirlwind activity. As a mother, she feared her daughter Sophie would follow in the footsteps of the grandmother Sophie never knew. Unraveling the mysteries of her mother’s and daughter’s illnesses, Pruchno fought to preserve her marriage and protect her son. But it was not until she came to terms with her own secrets that she truly understood the destructive and pervasive effects mental illness has on families. Surrounded By Madness is transforming. It will empower families to stop hiding and start talking when mental illness strikes.

This book presents a candid insight into the “open-hearted” experience of foster care condensing years of experience and training by a retired foster parent. It addresses both the highs and lows of foster care and some practical ideas and solutions for situations that are unique to foster care.

From the Publisher: This touching and thought-provoking book examines the 19 years of frustrations encountered by David McKinstry, a gay man, trying to adopt and provide a loving home for orphaned children. McKinstry, adopted himself, shares the story of growing up in small town Ontario, fathering a son when he was a teenager, attempting to be the fastest man to swim across Lake Ontario, meeting his birth parents, and his burning desire to form a family unit with Nick, his HIV+ ex-Jesuit spouse. Intense, intriguing subplots abound in every chapter and make this book a fascinating read! Tragically before the dream to adopt was realised, Nick dies of AIDS and leaves the family portrait incomplete. David rallies while grieving the loss of his partner and the death of an hours-old infant daughter and continues his journey toward parenthood. David takes a Canadian bank to court over their refusal to honour his deceased spouse’s mortgage insurance and comes out publicly on CTV’s Canada AM.

From the Back Cover: Swings Hanging from Every Tree is a sensitive collection of encouraging, inspiring words and experiences from and for foster and adoptive parents and those who care for them and their families. You will find words of advice, validation, blessing, grace, and humor that we all need to hear on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis. Just the right words from someone who has been there can bring confidence, a sense of calm, a smile or even laughter.

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About the Author: Susan Stone Reynolds is a former foster/adoptive parent and a grandparent from Louisville, Kentucky. Her direct experience with the child welfare system, both as a parent and as a professional, gives her a sensitivity to the issues foster and adoptive parents face each day. Susan is the author of Breaking Open, a book of poetry.

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Compiler’s Note: The book is subdivided by date, a la a Page-a-Day calendar. Susan Stone Reynolds is credited with contributing 103 pages of content, in whole or in part.

For years, my friends have been saying that I should write a book, but it has always seemed that the days were too busy to sit down and put this outrageous life on paper. Has my life settled down? Not really. But I need to make sense of the craziness, and maybe writing will help. If you read books about happy endings, this book is not for you. The ending is real, and sometimes real life is not pretty and, oftentimes, not happy. To understand the whole picture, I must start at the very beginning. A song from my childhood reminds me—“The beginning is a very good place to start...”

From the Dust Jacket: In a career that has spanned twenty-five years, John Denver has earned international acclaim as a singer, songwriter, actor, and environmental activist. Songs like “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “Rocky Mountain High,” and “Annie’s Song” have entered the canon of universal anthems, but less than three decades ago, John Denver was a young man with little more than a fine voice, a guitar, and a dream. Growing up in a conservative military family, he was not expected to drop out of college and head to Los Angeles, where the music scene was flourishing. Nor was he expected to succeed.

In Take Me Home, John Denver chronicles the experiences that shaped his life, while unraveling the rich, inner journey of a shy Midwestern boy whose uneasy partnership with fame has been one of the defining forces of his first fifty years.

With candor and wit, John writes about his childhood, the experience of hitting L.A. as the Sixties roared into full swing, his first breaks, his years with the Mitchell Trio, his first songwriting success with “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” and finally a career that made his a global household name.

He also explores his relationships with the women in his life—particularly his first wife, Annie Martell, and his second wife, Cassandra Delaney—as well as his parents, his children, his partners through his life, and his friends.

Honest, insightful and rich in anecdotes that only a natural-born storyteller could tell so well, Take Me Home is a highly charged and fascinating book from beginning to end. It’s like spending a couple of days with a good friend.

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About the Author: John Denver has had fourteen gold and eight platinum albums in the United States alone. His recording John Denver’s Greatest Hits is still one of the largest selling albums in history of RCA Records, with sales of over 20 million copies.

In the 1960s, adoptions of foreign babies by residents of the United States were relatively rare. One woman sought to change that trend. In her memoir, Take My Children, author Bernice Gottlieb shares the story of her involvement in international adoptions. Gottlieb tells not only of her personal experience adopting a baby girl from Korea, but also of her of mission to find homes in the United States for children of Korean families banished to living in leprosy colonies. At the time, leprosy was an ugly word for Koreans, and society sought to separate these individuals suffering from the malady, also known as Hansen’s disease. The children of these people often endured harsh discrimination, and their parents wished for a better life for them. Including touching photos, Take My Children describes how Gottlieb’s tenacity helped her to overcome the many hurdles to help these Korean children. It recounts Gottlieb’s tireless efforts to find homes in the United States for healthy children of sick parents—efforts that reverberate even today.

Just like the cold fronts that cut into our Louisiana autumns, my life was interrupted one morning after having had a dream of a tragic encounter in an Amazon river. I woke up with a passion burning in my heart that I had not thought of in several years. That morning, I was hearing a heart wrenching, piercing cry cutting to my very core; ringing so loudly with desperation, I could not possibly paddle away as I did in the dream. I could not cast aside what I knew to be the very heart of God, now burning within myself. My husband and I were overwhelmed at having been hit with the same burden without ever discussing it. Take This Child is the incredible story of one family following God’s supernatural trail all the way to an orphan waiting in the heart of the Amazon.

From the Back Cover: Our decision to put off the baby stage was never a conscious one. Other things just happened. We spent too long being educated, did too much living and traveling and indulged our love of being together. No one ever told us that we might regret this foot-dragging, lackadaisical approach to parenthood.

Unfortunately when Laurel and David decide the time is right to expand their family, things don’t go according to plan. This honest and heartfelt memoir narrates their struggle to become parents—coping with the discovery of their infertility, the emotional and physical demands of IVF; their experiments with alternative therapies; and finally, their decision to adopt.

Will they make it through the adoption process? Will parenthood fulfill all their dreams? And when they become adopters for one baby girl, what happens when they discover that a sister is on the way?

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About the Author: Laurel Ashton was born in Lincolnshire in 1968. She is married to David and lives in the Midlands with their two children. She works in higher education.

From the Back Cover: Addicted to drugs from birth because of her mother’s substance abuse during pregnancy, newborn Megan is taken into Rosie’s loving care. Rosie is supposed to prepare Megan to move on to a new permanent home, but it turns out that Megan has already found her “forever mummy” in Rosie.

Rosie grows incredibly attached to Megan and applies to adopt her, but the system refuses her in favour of a high-flying couple, and Rosie is devastated. Against all her instincts, Rosie does her job and prepares Megan for her new “forever family,” but everything about Megan leaving feels wrong.

When Rosie learns a few months later that Megan’s adoption has broken down, she is saddened but also filled with hope—will this little girl be allowed to return to her true “forever home”?

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About the Author: Rosie Lewis is a full-time foster carer. She has been working in this field for over a decade. Before that, she worked in the special unit team for the police force. Based in northern England, Rosie writes under a pseudonym to protect the identities of the children she looks after.

Jim and Ann Dotson were overjoyed when they returned to the United States with their newly adopted baby daughter in October of 2003. Now, with their three biological children—Hillary, Bennett, and Hunter—they felt Aselya made their family complete. Not only that, but Jim had an excellent career at what Fortune magazine had just recently dubbed “The World’s Best Company”—Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. Jim had been with the company fifteen years now, and, until the decision to adopt, seemed on the career track to retire from Pfizer as a top executive. Then, just ten days after returning to the United States with Aselya, Jim was fired without any of the normal warnings. Three years later, the case of Dotson vs. Pfizer began in a Federal Courthouse in North Carolina. For Jim Dotson and his family; however, it was much more than a suit for unlawful termination. There was something else at work. When Jim had decided to balance his life more between home and career—and without any drop in his sales numbers or productivity—his supervisors at Pfizer began treating him differently. Had his decision to place more value on his family time really been the first domino to fall in a conspiracy to fire him? Jim knew something wasn’t right, so he decided to take on one of the biggest companies in the world before a jury of his peers to see if the truth would win out. Would it? Or would his actions destroy his reputation and even further hurt the very family he was standing to defend?

From the Publisher: In 1986, Martha Lev-Zion, a single woman in her 40s, heard about a TV documentary regarding 22 children with severe birth defects who had been abandoned by their birth parents in Israeli hospitals. Martha applied for one of those babies, but was told that of the 65 applications received, hers would be the last one considered. In the end, with only one baby remaining, Martha took into her care a 14-month-old girl with Down syndrome. This book relates the amazing journey of Martha’s life raising her daughter Tamar.

Interwoven with her experiences fighting Israeli governmental authorities, school systems, the birth family, and even the U.S. government, is her commitment to bring up her daughter as normally as possible, and the incredible accomplishments her daughter was able to achieve.

When she was 14 months old, Tamar was tested and found to have an IQ of between 45-60. Today she is a young woman of 21, living independently, with a job as an assistant secretary at a university. She still has some of the characteristics of a person with Down syndrome, but Martha’s commitment to maximize Tamar’s potential is something Martha feels any parent should do in rearing any child.

From the Back Cover: This popular and comprehensive guide outlines the whys, whens and hows of telling the truth about an adopted child’s origins. Now in its fifth edition, Talking About Adoption reflects current advice and good practice and is the only guide of its kind in the U.K. Based on the experience and knowledge of many people who have been adopted, as well as adoptive parents, this book offers guidance on:

• why telling your child is so important

• what to tell your child and when

• the responsibilities you face if your child is of a different ethnicity or from a different country

• how adopted children and their birth parents feel

• how to trace birth parents

• where you can get more help

This new edition also includes more information on contact, including social networking websites, adoption support and foster carers and adoption. A comprehensive list of useful organisations and resources is also included.

Talking About Adoption is packed with practical ideas suitable for children of all ages. The wealth of information and advice is brought to life with case studies detailing the experiences of adoptive parents and adopted children, ensuring that this book will enable adoptive parents to help their adopted children understand about adoption.

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About the Author: Marjorie Morrison has been a Child Placement Consultant with BAAF Scotland since 1981 and has spent many years developing services to link children and families. This has extended to consultancy on planning, preparation of children for adoption, and also discussion through the BAAF telephone advice service with many adopters and adoptees post-adoption. Her first adoption experience was in the assessment of adopters for young children in Northern Ireland. Marjorie is also a co-author of Making Good Assessments and Right from the Start.

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Compiler’s Note: This book was initially published under the title Explaining Adoption to Your Adopted Child: A Guide for Adoptive Parents in 1987 as a 32-page, large-format volume credited exclusively to Prue Chennells.

From the Publisher: This book is designed to acquaint pre-adoptive families and those new to adoption issues with the important questions that children will need to resolve as they grow up. Taking a developmental approach, the book begins with infancy and progresses through the teen years. For each stage, it has suggestions on talking to your child about adoption. The emphasis of this book is that communication about adoption is an ongoing process.

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By the Same Author: Children of Open Adoption (with Kathleen Silber; 1990, Corona Publishing Co.) and How to Open an Adoption: A Guide for Parents and Birthparents of Minors (1997, R-Squared Press), among others.

From the Back Cover: How do young children make sense of the fact that they are adopted? What worries might they have? In this insightful and sympathetic book, a clinical psychologist and a psychiatrist, both adoptive mothers, prepare parents for conversations with their children about adoption. Accounts with twenty parents of conversations about adoption with their children, from ages two to ten, graphically convey what the process of sharing about adoption is like.

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About the Author: Mary Watkins, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, a core faculty member at the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, and the author of Waking Dreams and Invisible Guests: The Development of Imagined Dialogues.

Susan Fischer, M.D., is a psychoanalyst and a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago, a faculty member of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and coauthor of To Do No Harm: DES and the Dilemmas of Modern Medicine.

From the Dust Jacket: Nuanced and poignant, heartrending and funny, Michelle Theall’s thoughtful memoir is a universal story about our quest for unconditional love from our parents, our children, and most important, from ourselves.

Even when society, friends, the legal system, and the Pope himself swing toward acceptance of the once unacceptable, Michelle Theall still waits for the one blessing that has always mattered to her the most: her mother’s. Michelle grew up in the conservative Texas Bible Belt, bullied by her classmates and abandoned by her evangelical best friend before she’d ever even held a girl’s hand. She was often at odds with her volatile, overly dramatic, and depressed mother, who had strict ideas about how girls should act. Yet they both clung tightly to their devout Catholic faith—the unifying grace that all but shattered their relationship when Michelle finally admitted she was gay.

Years later at age forty-two, Michelle has made delicate peace with her mother and is living her life openly with her partner of ten years and their adopted son in the liberal haven of Boulder, Colorado. But when her four-year-old’s Catholic school decides to expel all children of gay parents, Michelle tiptoes into a controversy that exposes her to long-buried shame, which leads to a public battle with the Church and a private one with her parents. In the end she realizes that in order to be a good mother, she may have to be a bad daughter.

Michelle writes with wry wit and bald honesty about her life, seamlessly weaving her past and her present into a touching commentary on all the love, pain, and redemption that families inspire. Teaching the Cat to Sit makes us each reflect on our sense of humanity, our connection to religion, and our struggles to accept ourselves—and each other—as we are.

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About the Author: Michelle Theall is an award-winning health, fitness, and travel writer and the founder of Women’s Adventure magazine. Her feature essay in 5280, the inspiration for her memoir, was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award. She lives with her partner, their son, and three dogs in Boulder, Colorado.

From the Dust Jacket: How can parents be alert to the emotional crises that occur in the life of every child? And how can parents help their children cope with these emotionally charged experiences, which can be devastating and cause lasting damage if not handled well?

Suzanne Ramos has interviewed many of the outstanding authorities in the field of child-rearing to find out what they consider the best ways of dealing with these crises. Here in one book is the most upto-date advice available on

• what and what not to tell an adopted child

• times you mustn’t be separated from your child

• how to deal with frightening episodes in a child’s life, such as sexual molestation, witnessing a murder, the mental breakdown of a parent, when a parent goes to jail, or has lost a job

• preparing a child for coping with the death of a loved one

• school phobia, what it can lead to and why it should be treated early

• why divorce is always traumatic

• how to help the adolescent with his critical life choices (heterosexuality, leaving home, and career choice) ...

• and much, much more.

Though it deals with crises, this is a comfortable, reassuring book that encourages what the author calls “preventive parenting.” Based on the very latest research, it is intended to assist parents in dealing effectively with minor child-rearing problems before they become major ones; to help anticipate and avert crises before they erupt; and beyond this, to utilize the common stresses of life, and even the tragedies, in strengthening the child’s emotional growth.

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About the Author: Suzanne Ramos, a former elementary-school teacher, has a master’s degree in education from Teachers College, Columbia, and has published articles on the problems of children in various magazines, She and her husband and their two young children live in New York City.

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Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, Chapter 7: Let’s Adopt (pp. 69-78), consisting of the following: A positive means of adding to one’s family—How will other people react when they learn that we adopted a child?—Should I tell people that my child is adopted?—Should I tell my child that he is adopted?—Aren’t we just giving our child extra problems by telling him that he is adopted?—What about the question of honesty?—Both sides considered ...—If we do tell our child that he is adopted, when should we tell him?—Suppose our child finds out before we’ve told him—How will our child react to being told that he is adopted?—Are there problems to watch for in our relationship with our adopted child, and if so, what are they?—Are there special sibling-rivalry problems where there is an adopted child?

This e-book gives you the basic strategy needed to implement The Coach Approach. Drawing on his experiences growing up in foster care, Mr. Marteney invites us to try a different approach to foster parenting. Parent and Coach are two defined roles that kids are familiar with and that coexist in our society. The key to the coach approach is to step into the role of coach and not try to replace the parent. When we do this, no boundaries are crossed and a child is free to respect both roles without feeling guilt. This sets the child up for success and makes them more open to learning the skills they need to be a winner in the game of life.

Parenting can be filled with grief & sadness, especially when parenting children who are troubled or have special needs or were adopted. Parents living with their child’s challenging behaviors, mental health issues, physical disabilities, and more, often feel forgotten, ignored, unseen. Tears of Despair speaks directly to parents that are struggling with their kids and teenagers. No matter what kind of grief and despair parents might be going through, tears is part of the healing process. This book presents words of sorrow from famous poets, the Bible, and the mom of a short-term special needs child. These lamentations and poems speak about the sorrows and challenges of parenting children with diagnoses of reactive attachment disorder (RAD), bipolar, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, autism, as well as many adoptive and foster families. While this book is written for parents, family therapists and counselors will find this beneficial to share with their clients.