Customer Reviews

Is That Your Sister?: A True Story of Adoption

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

 

 

I did not anticipate that I would love this book as much as I do.
Most adoption books do not really "fit" our family for several reasons.
Our children are adopted through the county, so we were not chosen
by the birth parents, didn't get to meet them, etc. Our children
are a different ethnic background, we adopted siblings, etc. Our situation
is much different from that described in most children's adoption books.
When I got the book today, it didn't seem like much. I wasn't prepared
for a story that would seem so much likes ours. I did a quick read
thru before reading it with our kids (ages 10,8,6 and 1). I didn't make
it thru without crying. It felt like my child wrote it.
I am so excited to find a book FINALLY that fits, and that our kids
can relate to. I am considering sending a copy to a few families close
to us.
One of the best things about the book is that the adoptive mother
and adopted daughter wrote the book together. It is written from the
point of view of the child, 6 yrs old. The recommended age is 4-8 yrs,
but it was totally appropriate for my 10 yr old son. I think it is ever
so much more touching because it is written as the daughter telling
you the story, and what an awesome experience for a mother and
daughter to go through together--writing a book like this together!

This is a great book that incorporates two issues that children often have to deal with: adaption and racial issues. The book, told in the first person, focuses on two adapted children of two different cultural backgrounds. Highly reccommended--it will teach your children that not everybody in the world is the same.

My wife and I are currently in process to adopt 2 children.
We saw this book and purchased it.
Part of our journey and fear has been how to prepare our children for the looks, stares, and questions they will get about their new siblings.
People are always too frank and espiecially children don't know sometimes how to deal with that frankness..
this book walks through a young fair skinned girl who is a apart of a family who adopts a dark skinned girl.
It shows how she dealt with questions about adoption, different races, color of hair or even hair texture.
This was perfect for my 9 year old to read and understand better how to 'respond' vs. react to people's questions.

This book cuts out all the adult psycho-babble and goes right to the day to day issues that the adopted child faces in terms a child can relate to.

Catherine and Sherry Bunin, Is That Your Sister? (Our Child Press, 1992)

Is That Your Sister? is another of the adoption books I've been reading recently. It's more vertical-market than the others (as the title implies, it's about how to deal with questions from ruder sections of the populace when your parents have adopted a child who doesn't look much like you), but still holds up quite nicely under scrutiny. (To clarify and explain that comment: books are like computer programs. The more vertical-market they are, the shoddier they tend to be. Think back to the worst of your school textbooks for an excellent example.) The big drawback is that there's not much there to hold up for scrutinizing. This isn't to say it's bad-- nothing impressed itself upon me as really awful (as the creepy pictures in This Is How We Became a Family), but within two weeks of first reading it, I had to read it again in order to refresh anything but the basics of the book's mission in my head. It doesn't stand out either in a good or a bad way, but that puts it ahead of about 90% of vertical-market books of any type. Thus, if you are in a situation like this (if you have adopted children of two different races, for example, or if you have a birth child and an adopted child from another country), you may well find this a valuable book to have around. ***