Be My Baby: Parents & Children Talk About Adoption [Hardcover]

Gail Kinn (Author), Ken Shung (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2000

With insight and emotion, Be My Baby dramatizes the deeply felt bonds and life-affirming experiences that are at the heart of an adoptive family. Told through the voices of adoptive parents, their children (young and grown-up) and birth mothers, and accompanied by stunning photographs, it offers a luminous portrait of family life in the tradition of such best-selling books as Best Friends and Sisters.

With over thirty first-person accounts, including such notable adoptive parents as Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest and Brooke Adams and Tony Shalhoub, Be My Baby evocatively portrays the rich variety of adoption arrangements and experiences.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This photo-essay features the selected reflections of adoptive parents, adopted children ages 9 to 19, adults adopted as infants, and two birth mothers. The majority of the pieces focus on feelings and memories of parents or adult children. A variety of situations are presented: private and agency adoptions, domestic and international adoptions, only-child and multiple-children families, and families with combinations of adopted and biological children. The subjects are candid when discussing the conflicting and complex emotions surrounding such issues as nature versus nurture theories, ethnic identity, sibling relationships, feelings of loss, insecurities and fears, and coping with reactions of others to blended family. Despite the wide range of experiences and emotions presented, the overall message is positive and affirming. The cases included make for interesting and thought-provoking reading and could be used as discussion starters. Quality black-and-white photographs of the subjects illustrate this oversized title.-Heide Piehler, Shorewood Public Library, WI

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Kinn interviewed birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted children to examine how adoption impacts individuals and families. Through these first-person accounts and photographs by Shung, this book brings faces and voices to the emotions and trends behind the process of adoption, from open adoption to multiracial adoption. Adopting parents talk about the frustrations and joys of the process; birth parents speak of loss and expectations for their children; and the children talk about their shifting sense of identity and affiliation. The total package is an absorbing look at the joys and challenges of adoption and family formation. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Artisan; 1 edition (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579651526
• ISBN-13: 978-1579651527
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 11.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,043,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars About "Be MyBaby", September 24, 2000

By 

Diane Churchill (Nyack, NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Be My Baby: Parents & Children Talk About Adoption (Hardcover)

I must start with a disclaimer, since I am in this book as a birthmother, and every page is charged for me. I feel Gail's warmth and intense concern for all aspects of adoption have elicited a high degree of openness from her participants. Her vision is realistic and loving. Ken's photos are often incredible, beginning with the baby on the cover who looks at us like a fully formed little being.

It is the children's stories I like the best. Their words are fresh and unexpected, and bring us into their experience wonderfully.

I am grateful that birthmothers have their rightful place in this book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book About Family Love, September 22, 2000

By 

Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Be My Baby: Parents & Children Talk About Adoption (Hardcover)

Okay, I give up. I am the author of this book! But how often does an author get a chance to tell you what their hopes are for their book (in addition to selling a few copies), and what their book truly offesr? When my niece was adopted, the only fear I didn't have was that I would love her, totally. And I do. But raising a family, any family, demands what's best in us and often brings out what is worst. It requires us to understand what we sometimes don't, tries our patience, and rewards us with an unparalleled kind of love. I wondered, like many people in the throws of the decision to adopt, "Would an adoptive family be even more demanding? How difficult will it to be to answer my child's questions about being adopted? Would even the smallest problems be seen as 'adoption problems?' Would my child feel a sense of loss? And would she know deep in her heart that we are her family? How different is it being an adoptive family? How much or how little attention to you have to pay to that fact of your's and your child's life? I know I share these questions with many of you out there. I read all the profession literature and when I found that that didn't quite answer my questions i decided instead to talk to the people who lived as adoptive families. What they told me changed my thoughts and feelings in an essential way. Adoption is much more matter of fact if you don't let feelings get ahead of you. As someone said, "the problem is not in your heart, it's in your head." Adoption is a part, but not the whole of the recipe of who you are. I hope these extremely honest and resonant (and funny) first-person heartfelt observations: which are in the words of parents, young children, grown adoptees, and brith mothers--tell you what you need--and long--to know. They did that for me. I want this book to show you how and why adoption works. And if you are already an adoptive family, it's wonderful to read about what grown adoptees say. I should take out a billboard and announce, your teenager will say, and get ready for it: "You're not my real mother." But they will never mean it. They just know it will push the right buttons. It's good for all of us to know this, so we don't get thrown when it happens. There's a lot more. Ken Shung's photography is masterful. I'd love to hear from you too!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful new look at adoption, October 20, 2000

By 

Sandra Sailor (Bradenton, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Be My Baby: Parents & Children Talk About Adoption (Hardcover)

Through individual stories, Gail Kinn presents an accurate and inspiring look at the profound impact of adoption on families, birth parents and adopted children and adults. Several of the families who are profiled adopted internationally but the groundbreading content in this book is in the honest exploration of relationships in domestic adoptions, and the family dynamics of open adoptions. Young and adult adoptees tell their own stories and birth parents representing several generations are included. The superb photographs by Ken Shung make for the first coffee-table quality book about adoption that I've seen but the stories are too compelling to put down.