Adoption/Foster Famlies
Fiction
| Nonfiction
FICTION
The following books can be
found in the Fiction collection, shelved by the first three letters of
the author's last name, e.g., F BAR .
Ashley, Bernard. Little soldier.
Taken from
Africa to a foster home in London
after his family is killed by an enemy tribe, Kaninda
discovers the meaning of hate and the value of not hating.
Banks, Kate. Walk softly, Rachel.
When fourteen-year-old
Rachel reads the journal of her brother, who died when she was seven, she
learns secrets that help her understand her parents and herself.
Bardi, Abby. The Book of Fred.
A sheltered
fifteen-year-old girl named Mary Fred Anderson is removed from home in a fundamentalist sect and placed in foster
care in a Washington, D.C. suburb, where a violent act upon her
new family has an indelible impact on her, making her reexamine her long-held
beliefs.
Barkley,
Brad and Hepler, Heather. Jars
of glass. [2008].
Two
sisters, aged fourteen and fifteen, offer their views of events that occur
during the year after their mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia and their
family, including a recently adopted Russian orphan, begins to disintegrate.
Bauer,
Cat. Harley, like a person. [2000]
Fourteen-year-old
Harley, an artistic teenager living with her alcoholic father and angry
mother, suspects that she is adopted and begins a search for her biological
parents.
Belton,
Sandra. Store-bought baby. [2006]
The
death of Leah's beloved older brother, and her parents' reactions to the
tragedy, raise questions for Leah about the meaning of family and about her
place in her own.
Byars, Betsy. PINBALLS.
Three foster
children slowly grow to realize that they can make choices about how they
live their lives.
Calvert,
Patricia. YESTERDAY'S DAUGHTER.
Leenie was deserted by her unmarried mother
and adopted by her grandparents when she was three months old. She is
now 16 and her mother is coming to visit. Leenie
must struggle with her resentment of her mother in addition to her adolescent
identity problems. This novel contains significant insights about the
meaning of life.
Carlson,
Melody. Just ask : a novel. [2005]
Sixteen-year-old
Kim Peterson learns more about herself and her friends, and practices her new
commitment to God, by writing a teen advice column for the newspaper on which
her father is managing editor.
Cree,
Ronald. Desert blood 10pm/9c. [2006]
When
Gus Gonzalez was 12, he was adopted by television star Nick Hernandez, age 26
and single. Now Gus is 14, Nick's cop character
is wildly popular, and it seems that everyone in rural Palmdale, CA,
and in the media feels free to cast aspersions on Nick and Gus's
relationship.
Crutcher, Chris. Whale talk.
Intellectually
and athletically gifted, TJ, a multiracial, adopted teenager, shuns organized
sports and the gung-ho athletes at his high school until he
agrees to form a swimming team and recruits some of the school's less
popular students.
Fleischman, Paul. Breakout.
A young woman
presents a play based on her life as a seventeen-year-old runaway whose
escape from her foster home in Los
Angeles is thwarted by an all-day traffic jam, an
event which provides time for her to explore her free-floating identity, hunger
for her unknown mother, and yearning for human connection.
Frost, Helen. Keesha's house.
Seven teens
facing such problems as pregnancy, closeted homosexuality, and abuse each
describe in poetic forms what caused them to leave home and where they found
home again.
Gray, Dianne E. Holding up the earth.
Fourteen-year-old Hope visits her new foster mother's Nebraska farm and,
through old letters, a diary, and stories, gets a vivid picture of the past
in the voices of four girls her age who lived there in 1869, 1900, 1936, and
1960.
Hicks,
Betty. Get real. [2006]
Destiny,
a thirteen-year-old control freak who feels alienated in her messy, haphazard
family, helps her adopted best friend when she finds her birth mother and
decides to have a relationship with her.
Hrdlitschka, Shelley. Dancing
naked : a novel. [2001]
16-year-old
Kia learns she is pregnant. She must then confront
not only her own fears but also the feelings of her parents and her friends
from her church youth group. Throughout the book, the teen matures and begins
to understand that giving birth and raising a baby are two different things.
Johnson,
Angela. Heaven. [2000]
Fourteen-year-old
Marley's seemingly perfect life in the small town of Heaven is disrupted when she discovers that
her father and mother are not her real parents.
Klass, David. Home of the Braves.
Eighteen-year-old
Joe, captain of the soccer team, is dismayed when a hotshot player shows up
from Brazil
and threatens to take over both the team and the girl whom Joe hopes to
date.
________. You don't know me : a novel.
Fourteen-year-old
John creates alternative realities in his mind as he tries to deal with his
mother's abusive boyfriend, his crush on a beautiful, but shallow classmate
and other problems at school.
L'Engle, Madeleine. MEET THE AUSTINS.
Maggy Hamilton
is n orphan who goes to live with the Austin
family; they are a warm, fun-loving family.
Lowry,
Lois. FIND A STRANGER, SAY GOODBYE.
Natalie has a
loving family and is ready for college except for one thing: she knows
she's adopted and is determined to find her natural mother. Her foster
parents support her in her search for her real mother, but Natalie is not
happy with what she discovers.
Lundgren, Mary Beth. Love, Sara.
In a series of e-mails
and journal entries Sara, a high-school junior with a history of sexual abuse
and foster home care, reveals her feelings about herself and two friends who
are headed for destruction.
McDonald, Janet. Spellbound.
Raven, a
teenage mother and high school dropout living in a housing project, decides,
with the help and sometime interference of her best friend Aisha, to study
for a spelling bee which could lead to a college preparatory program and
four-year scholarship.
Morrison, Toni. A mercy. [2008].
Myers, Walter
Dean. WON'T KNOW TILL I GET THERE.
Steve lives in Harlem and keeps a diary about his parent's decision to
adopt Earl, a foster child. Things go awry when Steve learns that Earl
has a criminal record. After committing vandalism, they are both
assigned to do community service in a retirement home, where they both learn
some valuable lessons.
Nixon, Joan
Lowery. A FAMILY APART.
This historical
novel is based on an actual event in history - the 19th century American
practice of sending children out west on "orphan trains" to be
adopted. The story is about how the mother of six children puts them on
the Orphan Train to begin new, and hopefully better, lives.
Nolan, Han. Born blue.
Janie was four
years old when she nearly drowned due to her mother's neglect. Through
an unhappy foster home experience, and years of feeling that she is unwanted,
she keeps alive her dream of someday being a famous singer.
Okimoto, Jean Davies. MOLLY BY ANY
OTHER NAME.
When Molly
turns 18 she fills out some application forms that make her deal with the
fact that she is adopted. The forms ask for information regarding her
family heritage and health tendencies, so Molly decides it is time to find
out about her biological family. The book has three parts: her
adoptive parents' perspective, her biological mother's perspective, and the
meeting of the two families.
Peck, Robert Newton. Extra innings.
After a tragic
airplane crash that claims the lives of most of his family, sixteen-year-old
Tate goes to live with his wealthy great-grandfather and his adopted black
great-aunt Vidalia.
Perkins, Mitali. First daughter: extreme American makeover
[2007].
During
her father's presidential campaign, sixteen-year-old Sameera
Righton, who was adopted from Pakistan at
the age of three, struggles with campaign staffers who want to give her a more
"all-American" image and create a fake weblog
in her name.
Reiss,
Kathryn. Blackthorn winter. [2006].
An
idyllic seaside artists' colony in England is the scene of murder,
and fifteen-year-old American-born Juliana Martin-Drake attempts to solve the
crime while unraveling the mystery of her own past.
Reinhardt,
Dana. A brief chapter in my impossible life. [2006].
Sixteen-year-old
atheist Simone Turner-Bloom's life changes in unexpected ways when her
parents convince her to make contact with her biological mother, an agnostic
from a Jewish family who is losing her battle with cancer.
Voigt,
Cynthia. SONS FROM AFAR.
James becomes
obsessed with finding his biological father, thinking that the discovery will
help him with his own problems of adolescence. His brother, Sammy,
isn't all that interested but decides to help James with his cause. The
boys know virtually nothing about their father since he left when they were
both quite young. What they discover about him, they'd rather not know.
On the positive side, the boys become closer and learn about their won inner
strengths and weaknesses.
Zephaniah,
Benjamin. Refugee
boy.
Fourteen-year-old
Alem Kelo adjusts to life
as a foster child seeking asylum in London, whild his Eritrean mother and Ethiopian father work for
peace between their homelands in Africa.
NONFICTION
362.7 COH
Cohen, Shari.
Coping with being adopted.
Discusses
feelings and questions associated with being adopted, taking into account both birth parents and adoptive
parents and dealing with the beginning, the end, and everything in between.
362.7 CUR
Currie, Stephen. Adoption.
Discusses
issues related to adoption, including parental rights, racial mixing,
international adopting, and privacy concerns.
362.7 GRI
Gritter, James L., ed. Adoption without fear.
Seventeen
couples tell their emotion-filled experiences with open adoption.
362.7 KRE
Krementz, Jill. How it feels to be adopted.
Interviews with
adopted children and adoptive families about their experiences and feelings
concerning adoption.
362.7 LIN
Lindsay, Jeanne Warren and Monserrat, Catherine Paschal. Adoption awareness: a
guide for teachers, counselors, nurses, and caring others.
A guide for
anyone wishing to support the adoption alternative in crisis pregnancy.
362.7 LIN
Lindsay, Jeanne Warren. Open adoption: a caring option.
Fascinating and
sensitive account of the new wolrd of adoption.
362.7 PEL
Pelzer, David J. A man named Dave : a story of
triumph and forgiveness.
The final entry
in a trilogy of memoirs in which Dave Pelzer, brutally abused as a child,
discusses the struggles he faced as an adult, and his determination to have a
meaningful life.
362.7 PEL
Pelzer, David J. Child called "It" : one
child's courage to survive.
David Pelzer,
victim of one of the worst child abuse cases in the history of California,
tells the story of how he survived his mother's brutality and triumphed over
his past.
362.7 PEL
Pelzer, David J. The lost boy : a foster child's
search for the love of a family.
The author
tells of his experiences in five foster homes and juvenile detention, after
he was taken away from his abusive mother and alcoholic father, and discusses
how he made it into the Air Force, and found love and contentment in his
life.
362.7 SIL
Silber, Kathleen and Speedlin,
Phylis. Dear Birthmother: thank you for our
Baby.
Recognizes that
standard adoption practices, secrecy, sealed records," officially"
encouraged misconceptions, were not for everyone and offers alternatives.
362.73 ADO
Espejo, Roman. Adoption : opposing viewpoints.
Twenty essays
present opposing viewpoints on several aspects of adoption, including the
protection of the rights of those involved; adoption as an alternative to
abortion; open and closed adoption; transracial
adoption; gay and lesbian adoptive parents; and Internet adoption.
362.73 ISS
Dudley, William. Issues in adoption.
362.73 PEL
Pelzer, David J. The privilege of youth : a
teenager's story of longing for acceptance and friendship.
362.73 WEI
Weiss, Ann E. Adoptions today : questions and
controversies.
362.734 ADO
Williams, Mary E. Adoption.
362.76 CHI
Gerdes, Louise I. Child abuse :
opposing viewpoints.
