Customer Reviews

Borya and the Burps: An Eastern European Adoption Story

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A good adoption book is hard to find. Especially country specific. If I had listened to the current reviews on Amazon, my daughter (adopted from Kazakhstan) would have missed out!

As an adult adoptee and adoption professional, I really hate those feel-good, rah rah adoption books that totally invalidate the complexity of adoption-related emotions.

What I loved about Borya and the Burps is the straight forward story line coupled with fabulous illustrations. The only time my 3 year old has seen a book with ' baby home photos' is in her toddler adoption lifebook.

It was very validating for her emotionally to have an 'offical hardback book' that told her story.

Did I talk over parts of it? Yup? Did I skip entire sections? Yup. But that's because Polina is 3. Instead I wove in her story as I read the book. "You played with the piano in the baby home."
It fascinated her to the point that "Borya" came to Home Depot with us today.

She will grow into this book---word for word. Page by page. She will know she is not alone in her journey from a country far away, starting in a room filled with babies.

Most importantly, Polina will know it is normal to have many different thoughts and feelings about changing families.

Borya and the Burps was a superb birthday gift for my 4-year old son, adopted from Russia as a baby. Right now he mostly likes to imitate Borya's burps and keep count of the seven babies in Borya's orphanage. As he matures, reading Borya's adoption story together will be an excellent way to talk about my son's own adoption story. The drawings are very cute, yet the story is not sugar-coated. It gently portrays the upheaval of adoption followed by happiness with a forever family. I highly recommend the book.

I am thrilled to have just received my copy of Borya and the Burps, and cannot wait to read it to our two daughters, siblings adopted from Russia in 2003, now ages 4 & 7. Although we have a few children's adoption books, none of them tell a story similar to that of our girls - adopted from Russia, adopted from a baby home/children's home, and most importantly - adopted into a Forever Family with a Mama and Papa who had waited and waited for them! The story gently introduces difficult adoption-related topics in a sensitive and funny way -- with a story about a toddler known for his great burps -- and isn't that the reason to buy children's books that tell stories of adoption?

Finally my girls will be able to hear a story similar to theirs that even deals with the same fears and worries that I know they had, and lets them know that they are not alone! We can read this book and retell our own adoption story again..."how we waited and waited to meet you"..."how we made you laugh at the baby home"..."how you couldn't understand our words"..."how you cried and cried on the plane"...we even encountered a very stoic judge who only smiled at the very end of our hearing -- a story my girls love to hear over and over again.

While this is not an adoption reference book, I also love the foreward that touches on the anxieties faced by children adopted out of institutional environments. This is a very accurate description of our own experience, and it's a great reminder to adults as they read this book to children.

Thank you Perspectives Press for a great FAMILY book!

This was a wonderful book to give to my son for "Gotcha Day".
I was looking for a book to read to my son about adoption so when he is old enough to have the conversation with, he will remember the words Russia, adoption and the airplane. This is a wonderful book to read to my now 2-1/2 year old (adopted from Russia at 18 months). My son loves books and this is one book that he brings to me every night to read to him. He points out the cribs and the babies and acts like he understands adoption. This will make it easier to explain his adoption to him in detail when he is older.

First a little background: We received Borya and the Burps from a well-meaning relative, as a gift for our two children who we adopted as infants from Russia in 1999. Unfortunately we will not be keeping the book - since '99 I've worked as an adoption support resource, running international adoption seminars, talking families upon families through the process of adopting from Russia - based upon that experience I can say I would not recommend Borya and the Burps to any family I've ever counseled.

Now as to specifics for our reason: in my opinion the book is not sure what it wants to be. Is it a children's story presenting a comforting yet realistic look at E. European adoption or is it an informational book that is useful to adults? From what I read it mixes up both, accomplishing only a children's style book that would only be useful for adults. The information about adoption is presented in such a way that would be extremely useful for prospective PARENTS who are, especially for the first time, going through the adoption process. The book depicts what a mind-blowing experience being adopted can be for a child who had been institutionalized. The book does that with great kindness; BUT it does not, in my opinion, take into consideration its "real" audience, that of small children. The information is astoundingly frightening....

First, our hero, Borya witnesses another baby being adopted by an American family. Borya, as described in the book is confused. He asks himself questions about where did our baby go, would the baby be all right, along with several other questions that allude to his fears and uncertainty. That page ends telling us that Borya's tummy hurt that night.

When Borya's parents do show up to the orphanage, Borya notices the daddy reminds him of the doctor who "came to poke and prod the babies and sometimes stuck them with a needle". Borya wondered if the daddy would stick him with a needle. The book goes on to tell us Borya wouldn't like that.

When the caretaker tells Borya that these people are his new mommy and daddy the author has Borya respond with confusion and fear. I'm not making this up, it's right in the book!

It's too bad, really. I know it's a struggle for parents to find just the right children's adoption books. For very young children I'd recommend Happy Adoption Day. If parents have slightly older children who are beginning to ask questions or have concerns about being adopted, I'd recommend Let's Talk About It: Adoption by Mr. Rogers. Yeah, that Mr. Rogers!

At least the drawings in Borya and the Burps are cute; but that's honestly the only part, in my opinion, that is appropriate for young children.

This is a nice book about a baby being adopted from Russia. It uses pictures and terminology that adoptive parents will be familiar with. The pictures are good and the story line kept my 6 yr. olds attention.

I found myself rather amazed reading reviews of this book that mention its "oversimplification" of the story. Well, the story is told from the point of view of an infant who looks to be not much more than a year old! Of course it is simple!

But the emotions and issues running throughout the book are definitely not simple ones. The beauty of this book is that it shows adoption from the baby's - Borya's - perspective. His comfort in his simple world and his routine. The smells. The language and the music. Then suddenly, 2 strangers who "talk funny" are are called Mama and Papa enter the picture.

His comfort zone is gone. Things smell different and taste different. He worries about who will feed and change and burp him.

Frankly, I think this book should be required reading for anyone planning to adopt a child from Eastern Europe. I know that I wish I had read it before we traveled to Azerbaijan to adopt our son. All of the emotions Borya experiences were the same for our son.

Adoptive parents must be careful not to allow their joy to overshadow the fear and uncertainty that is going through the mind of the child. This book helped me see things from my son's perspective - albeit 3 years late!

I highly recommend it to any family formed in Eastern Europe. The story will "grow" as your child grows. He will find news things in it and ask different questions. But it is a very good book!

My children were adopted from Kazakhstan and this is the first book that really showed the adoption experience we had. I read it to my daughter and it prompted all kinds of questions about our experience that she never raised before.
I think it's a great addition to our "adoption" library.

I adopted my daughter from Russia at the age of 2. She's now 5, and I recently started reading this book to her. She has asked for it almost every night since we got it, and last night she asked me if we can keep this book forever and ever. I don't recall her ever asking that about any book before.

When I'm reading it to her, I change "orphanage" to "Baby Home" about half the time. She tries to sort out which babies are girls and which are boys, insists on counting the cribs and babies each time, and she tells me that the little boy thinks the dad is going to give him a shot, before we get to that part of the story. I don't know how much she remembers of her time in a Russian orphanage, but something is resonating for her.

Another aspect of this that ties into our own story is that I had already told her that the judge in our case was a woman, so this seems to her to be very credible.

My son really enjoys having this book read to him--though before I can even start, I have to assure him that all the children will get "picked" after the story ends. The art work is charming and the story quite sweet. Like other reviewers, we have avoided the term "orphange" at our house, and I almost didn't get this book after reading the comments about it. With so few choices for books about Russian boys, I decided to give it a try, deciding in the end, I'd rather he heard the word from me than others. It hasn't been a problem at all. This is a very good story for young boys adopted from Russia. Never heard the term "Mamachka" before, though--perhaps that's Romanian?