Adoption Booklist

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

Fiction

  • Somebody's Daughter
    Author: Lee, Marie Myung-Ok
    Publisher: Beacon $ 23.95 ISBN: 0807083887 Date: 2005
    star Booklist
    Adopted by a Midwest couple, 19-year-old Sarah Thorson studies one summer in Korea and eventually embarks on a crusade to find her birth mother. Paralleling Sarah's story, Kyung-sook, a Korean woman, reflects on the child she was forced to give away.
    Suggested Reading: Debuts | Asian American Stars | Adult Books for Teens
    Updated 3.3.05
  • The Lucky Gourd Shop
    Author: Scott, Joanna C.
    Publisher: MacMurray & Beck $ 27 ISBN: 1878448013 Date: 2000
    star Booklist
    Joanna Scott's "smart, sensitive book about independence, identity and survival"--"The New York Times Book Review, " tells the haunting tale of three fatherless Korean children--and the mother who gave them away.
    Suggested Reading: Adoption
    Updated 7/25/00
  • Gardens in the Dunes
    Author: Silko, Leslie
    Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0684811545 Date: 1999
    star BLstar PW
    From the acclaimed author of Almanac of the Dead - the smoldering, haunting, and incandescent story of an Indian girl orphaned by an act of white brutality and adopted by a proper Victorian family.
    Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
  • Fresh Kills
    Author: Wheat, Carolyn
    Publisher: Berkley $ 19.95 ISBN: 0425147851 Date: 1995
    star Kirkus
    Former defense attorney Carolyn Wheat uses her extensive knowlegde of the law to bring a striking authenticity to this new mystery featuring criminal lawyer Cass Jameson. At the request of a colleague, Cass reluctantly ventures out of her realm of expertise to handle an adoption case. But complications arise when the young birth mother is murdered.
    Updated 10.25.05
  • For Kids

  • The Angel Factory
    Author: Blacker, Terence
    Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 16.95 ISBN: 0689851715 Date: 2001
    Star Image Bulletin Star Image PW
    Thomas Wisdom seems to live the perfect life--so perfect, in fact, that it bothers him. But when he hacks into his father's computer, he discovers secret upon secret. First, that he's adopted. Then, that his parents are not human. They are angels, sent to earth to save humanity from itself. Thomas learns that he is to play a major role in this plan too --but does he want to?
    Grades: 5+ Category: Fiction | Speculative
  • The Snake-Stone
    Author: Doherty, Berlie
    Publisher: Orchard $ 16.95 ISBN: 0531095126 Date: 1996
    Star Image Horn Book Star Image Kirkus Star Image PW Star Image SLJ
    While searching for his birthmother, fifteen-year-old James, a championship diver, discovers who his real parents are and where his real home is.
    Grades: 7+ Category: Fiction
  • Missing Sisters
    Author: Maguire, Gregory
    Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry $ 15 ISBN: 0689505906 Date: 1994
    Star Image Kirkus
    Twelve-year-old Alice, an orphan who has never been adopted because of her physical handicap and difficult personality, is shocked to discover she has an identical twin sister living nearby.
    Grades: 5-9 Category: Fiction

Nonfiction

  • The Other Mother: A Woman's Love for the Child She Gave Up for Adoption
    Author: Schaefer, Carol
    Publisher: Soho $ 19.95 ISBN: 0939149419 Date: 1991
    star Kirkus
    When Carol Schaefer gave up her baby boy for adoption in 1966, the nuns at the Catholic home for unwed nothers promied that Carol would forget the whole experience and go on with her life. But 17 years of longing for her firstborn son sends Carol on a quest to find him--a quest that takes two years, exposes psychological and emotional wounds, and brings great joy.
    Updated 10.25.05
  • Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir
    Author: Tucker, Neely
    Publisher: Crown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0609609769 Date: 2004
    star PWstar Bookliststar LJ
    In the heart of conflict-torn Zimbabwe, an American couple fights to save the life of--and ultimately adopt--an infant girl who had been abandoned beneath an acacia tree on the day she was born.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars | Nonfiction That Reads Like Fiction | Adult Books for Teens | Memoir Stars
    Updated 1.15.04