Customer Reviews

Adopted Jane

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read this in elementary school (I'm over 30 now) and it was a sweet story about Jane - a girl of about 11 or 12 who lives in an orphanage. During the summer, she is invited to spend time with a farm family and an older woman who lives alone. Both end up wanting to adopt Jane and she struggles with which offer to accept. Her observations of each situation are very mature for her age. This is a really enjoyable book and I wish I still had my copy!

I read this book when I was 11, my parents were getting divorced, and I have always thought back on it as a comforting book. For years I wanted to find this book and read it again, but could not remember the name, and then happened across it one day about fifteen years later. I mention this, because it shows the positive lasting impression. It is a loving down to earth book set in a time that no longer exists, and is fun to read about and live through. For anyone who has read Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, I would rate this up with that book; Adopted Jane is set for a younger reader, and is less fanciful, but just as dear.

Jane is a girl who has always lived in the orphanage. She has been passed over time and time again by people who want pretty girls with curls, but she has learned to enjoy her place in the home. Now, for the first time, she has been invited to visit two different places in one summer! Live with her through her experiences and her joy in living in a real home for the first time. Experience with her the agony of choosing between the two homes she has learned to love. Her ability to enjoy and savor every moment of life could be a lesson to all of us!

This book has been one of my favorites for almost 30 years. It is written in such an engaging style that even the descriptions of the food made me look up recipes and try to cook food like they ate in the book.

A few years ago, I would have agreed with the former reviewers. But now I read it through the eyes of my 9-year-old adopted daughter. This book is written for her age group, a very impressionable age, who soak in more than we know from their reading. It is also an impressionable age for a child who is beginning to wonder about her background and what it means to be adopted.

This is not a good time for her to be reading about old-fashioned ideas about orphanage children who do not belong in polite society and are not adopted because they are not pretty, but maybe they might be wanted if they can work hard enough and become a sort of servant in an adoptive household.

Granted these unpleasant attitudes are from unpleasant characters, but they are there to soak into a child's impressions of herself. I appreciate that the thrust of the book is that the heroine overcomes these incorrect attitudes, but I'm afraid the age-appropriate reader will carry away too heavy a weight of questions about her own place in her family and community.

My fourth grade teacher gave me this book, which I treasured for years. I wrote a book report on it every year for three years; not because it was easy to do, but because I enjoyed reading it so much I wanted to reread it.

Jane is an orphan living in an orphanage when one summer, she is asked to go live with three different families. What an adventure she had, and I had, too. In the end, two families wanted her, and she loved them both. It was with great maturity that she came to her decision of which family to live with and the reader explores her reasons with her.

Many years later (I am now 40), I still reminisce about this book and will buy it for my own daughter to read. It is a beautiful story.

Adopted Jane is a great book. i first read it when i was in the fourth grade, and it is still a favorite eight years later. any little girl will love this book - it is easy to read, with lots of old-fashioned charm and a great story. i give it my highest recommendation.

I read this book years ago when I was a girl. I was thrilled to find it on here and order it. I re-read it immediately upon receipt. It's a touching story of a lost time. I thoroughly enjoyed it all over again.

I agree with Noel Piper. I have often thought about my idea that people might not like me but they could need me and that was a safer path, to be useful. I got the idea from this book. I am 60 now and this idea has stayed with me all my life. I felt Jane was right to distrust the happiness she had in the home with a friend who was like a sister. It would not have lasted. They would have gotten tired of her. Better to be needed. I am surprised that this is still in print. Sort of an older view of the world. I must say I have never forgoten it.