BOOKS

Adopting and Advocating for the Special Needs Child
By L. Anne Babb and Rita Laws

The authors, adoption professionals who have adopted 14 special needs children between them, provide a practical guidebook to assist prospective adopters. The book offers advice about getting started on the adoption path, becoming a family, facing realities (finances, education, trans-racial adoption) and coping when things go wrong. The book also provides an extensive appendix full of valuable resources.

Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections
by Jean MacLeod and Sheena Macrae

Featuring over 100 contributors, this book is a comprehensive resource of adoption information for readers at any knowledge level. Divided into chapters like "Sleep," "Claiming," "Language," and "Food," it touches upon major issues in brief essays written by adoptive parents, adoptees, and therapists.

Birth of an Adoptive, Foster, or Stepmother: Beyond Biological Mothering Attachments
By Barbara Waterman

This book addresses the changes that adoptive, foster, and stepmothers experience as a result of motherhood.

Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents
By Deborah Gray

The author, a clinical social worker specializing in attachment, grief, and trauma, has authored a comprehensive guidebook for adoptive parents, taking an in-depth look at how children and families adjust. The book focuses on special needs, families who are coming together through foster programs, families who are coming together at a later age, and families that cross cultural lines.

Adopting the Hurt Child: A Guide for Parents and Professionals
By Gregory Keck and Regina Kupecky

This book addresses various phases of the adoption process, early issues in the adoptive family, and age-specific problems and solutions. Issues about parenting or working with the abused or hurt child are also covered in-depth. The authors are the founders of a treatment center for children with developmental problems and have won Ohio's Adoption Worker of the Year award.

Twenty Things Adoptive Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew
by Sherrie Eldridge

In an attempt to inform adoptive parents of the unique issues adoptive children face, the author discusses anger, mourning, shame, and acceptance while using case studies to illustrate how parents can better relate to their adopted child.