Showing titles in Adoption & Fostering

Gerrold, a science fiction writer from California, adopts a son who has a slight behavioral problem. He believes himself to be a Martian. Gerrold begins the long, involving work of trying to earn the acceptance of Dennis, a hyperactive eight-year-old who desperately wants a father's love, but is so insecure he feels he must be an alien. Gerrold's semi-autobiographical memoir of the first two years with Dennis is a funny, endearing, heartbreaking, and beautifully written testament to fatherhood.

From this inauspicious beginning, entirely without support, Crystal Lindsey has created a system for survival allowing her to thrive and develop her emotional resilience. Crystal knows trauma unlocks superpowers, and she has developed biohacks to show you how to discover your own superpowers using daily gratitude and grit psychology. She gives you a story of hope and optimism while "getting real" about the challenges you will face in adulthood after growing up with abuse and/or aging out of foster care.

Ruth was a ghost of a girl when she arrived into foster mother Maggie Hartley's care. Pale, frail and withdrawn, it was clear to Maggie that Ruth had seen and experienced things that no 11-year-old should have to, that she had been conditioned to 'see no evil, speak no evil'. Ruth is in desperate need of help, but can Maggie get through to her and unlock the harrowing secret she carries? Through love, reassurance and patience, Maggie starts to unravel Ruth's painful past.

Magnanimous and charming, Bob Guterl knew that he could solve the racial problems bedeviling postwar America. Determined to stave off impending global catastrophe, the larger-than-life judge and his resolute wife, Sheryl, launched a radical experiment, raising their two biological sons alongside four children adopted from Korea, Vietnam, and the South Bronx―the so-called “war zones of the American century”―in a white clapboard house with a white picket fence in small-town New Jersey.

In a crumbling mansion in a small Irish village in County Wicklow, two elderly sisters, Ella and Roberta O'Callaghan, live alone in Roscarbury Hall with their secrets, memories, and mutual hatred. Long estranged by a dark family tragedy, the two communicate only by terse notes. But when the sisters are threatened with bankruptcy, Ella defies Roberta's wishes and takes matters into her own hands, putting her baking skills to good use and converting the mansion's old ballroom into a café.

Making babies. For some, it’s virtually effortless – an accident, a “happy surprise”, or an easily executed plan. But for others, this almost universal drive to start a family does not come quite so effortlessly. In fact, for many, it’s can be a frustrating and expensive quest that in some cases never pays off, leaving them childless. These people dearly want what many of us barely give a second thought: having a baby. To start a family. To be a parent. And these people will go to remarkable, at times almost unbelievable lengths, to do just that. Carry On is about those people.

When Rain Hurts is the story of one mother’s quest to find a magical path of healing and forgiveness for her son, a boy so damaged by the double whammy of prenatal alcohol abuse and the stark rigors of Russian orphanage life that he was feral by the time of his adoption at age three. Bizarre behaviors, irrational thoughts, and dangerous preoccupations were the norm - no amount of love, it turns out, can untangle the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome.

Are you ready to have kids? More and more gay men are turning to adoption and surrogacy to start their own families. An estimated two million American LBGTQ people would like to adopt and an estimated 65,000 adopted children are living with a gay parent. Unlike other parenting books that have whole chapters focusing on things specifically related to mothers (such as how to get the perfect latch when breastfeeding), this parenting book replaces those sections with things relevant to gay dads.

Uno de los más preciosos libros acerca del significado de la palabra familia. Cerca de cumplir los cincuenta años, Fabiola Hablützel descubrió que era adoptada. Después de salir del estado de conmoción que esta noticia le produjo, pensó que aquel descubrimiento era la respuesta a la pregunta que se había hecho desde niña. En más de una ocasión, la posibilidad de no ser hija biológica de sus padres rondó su mente, ya que el parecido físico con ellos no resultaba suficiente. Por más que recibió todo el amor que alguien hubiera podido desear, sentía que había algo distinto en ella.

Candace lost her son. Twice. The first time to adoption as an infant and then 23 years later, not long after reuniting with him. In this heart-wrenching and heart-warming memoir, Candace Cahill offers an intimate view of child relinquishment and child loss, the definition of motherhood, and how two things can be true at one time.

Forbidden Roots brings listeners into Fred Nicora’s innermost thoughts as he sees his foundation swept away with a simple slip of the tongue at the age of 41 while attending a large family gathering. This gripping and true story about being suddenly thrust into the world of adoption explores the expected and the unexpected as he seeks to understand his new identity and reframe his past.

No Sugar-Coating is a warm, straight-up guide to foster parenting that feels like a conversation with a knowledgeable friend. It is filled with practical suggestions interwoven with a compelling narrative rooted in foster parenting experience. No Sugar-Coating offers valuable insight for those eager to learn more about foster parenting as well as an anchoring for those who have already welcomed vulnerable children through their front door.

After two years of waiting to adopt - slogging through paperwork and bouncing between hope and despair - a miracle finally happened for Vanessa McGrady. Her sweet baby, Grace, was a dream come true. Then Vanessa made a highly uncommon gesture: when Grace’s biological parents became homeless, Vanessa invited them to stay. Without a blueprint for navigating the practical basics of an open adoption or any discussion of expectations or boundaries, the unusual living arrangement became a bottomless well of conflicting emotions and increasingly difficult decisions.

The 11th memoir and latest title from the internationally bestselling author and foster carer Cathy Glass. This book tells the true story of Cathy's adopted daughter Lucy. Lucy was born to a single mother who had been abused and neglected for most of her own childhood. Right from the beginning Lucy's mother couldn't cope, but it wasn't until Lucy reached eight years old that she was finally taken into permanent foster care.

Have you ever thought you’d adopt a child(ren), but after finding out it costs thousands of dollars, kicked that idea to the curb? Most people believe that all children in foster care return to their biological families. Many do not know that 50 percent of children in foster care need an adoptive family and that adopting children through foster care costs zero to $2,500. One hundred twenty thousand US children who are ready to be adopted are hoping you’ll listen to this book.

While most people meet their child for the first time in a delivery room, some parents have to meet their child in the reception area of an administrative building. Not Always Happy is a humorous and sharp chronicle about adopting and raising a son with Down syndrome from the Maine foster care system. The author quickly learns that life is best lived by expecting the unplanned when she makes the decision to become a parent in her late forties.

Foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe in 1997. After witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of AIDS on the population, especially the children, the couple started volunteering at an orphanage that was desperately underfunded and short-staffed. One afternoon, a critically ill infant was brought to the orphanage from a village outside the city. She'd been left to die in a field on the day she was born.

The inspirational story of an American woman who moved mountains to secure medical treatments - and eventually a home - for a young Iraqi girl severely burned in a roadside terror attack. This is a story of the astonishing power of self-sacrificial love.

When the two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene confided to friends that she and her husband planned to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria to add to their four children at home, the news threatened to place her, she writes, "among the greats: the Kennedys, the McCaughey septuplets, the von Trapp family singers, and perhaps even Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, gave birth to 69 children in eighteenth-century Russia."

Everybody knows what adoption is, but adoption has changed dramatically over recent decades. Open adoptions create an opportunity for biological parents to remain connected with the child even after the adoption takes place. Emotionally, this is still largely uncharted territory for everybody involved and relationships can be difficult to navigate. Told from the point of view of an adoptive father, the journey the Elkins took is such a roller coaster ride you would think this true story was fiction.