Recommended Reads

Essential books recommended by the NYS Citizens’ Coalition for Children for foster/adoptive families and anyone else who can benefit from a greater understanding of adoption and foster care. A portion of books purchased through Amazon via our website links will benefit NYSCCC. Just click on one of the following titles to purchase a copy and Amazon will automatically send a donation to NYSCCC.

Adoption Books

• Adopting the Hurt Child: Hope for Families with Special-Needs Kids by Gregory C. Keck & Regina Kupecky
• Adopting The Older Child by Claudia L. Jewett
• Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today’s Parents by Deborah D. Gray
• Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self by David Brodzinsky, Ph.D., Marshall Schechter, M.D. and Robin Hening
• Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens by Debbie Riley
• Brothers and Sisters in Adoption by Arleta M. James
• Help I’ve Been Adopted by Brenda McCreight
• Helping Children Cope with Separation and Loss, Revised Edition by Claudia L. Jewett Jarratt
• Nurturing Adoptions: Creating Resilience After Neglect and Trauma by Deborah D. Gray Perspectives Press, 2007
• Parenting Adopted Adolescents: Understanding and Appreciating Their Journeys by Gregory C. Keck
• Parenting the Hurt Child: Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow by Gegory C. Keck
• Parenting Your Adopted Older Child: How to Overcome the Unique Challenges and Raise a Happy and Healthy Child by Brenda McCreight, Ph.D.
• Real Parents, Real Children: Parenting the Adopted Child by Holly van Gulden and Lisa M. Bartels-Rabb
• Telling the Truth to Your Adopted or Foster Child: Making Sense of the Past by Betsy E.Keefer and Jayne E. Schooler
• The Connected Child: Bring hope and healing to your adoptive family by Karen Purvis
• The Family of Adoption: Completely Revised and Updated by Joyce Maguire Pavao
• The Open Adoption Experience – A Complete Guide for Adoptive and Birth Families by Lois Ruskai Molina
• Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew by Sherrie Eldridge
• Wounded Children, Healing Homes: How Traumatized Children Impact Adoptive and Foster Families by Jayne Schooler

Foster Care Books

• A Child’s Journey Through Placement by Vera I. Fahlberg, M.D.
• Another Mother: Co-Parenting with the Foster Care System by Sarah Gerstenzang
• A Guide to Foster Parenting: Everything But the Kids! by Mary Anne Goodearle, M.S.,
• A Guidebook for Raising Foster Children by Susan McNair Blatt, M.D.
• Advocating for Children in Foster and Kinship Care: A Guide to Getting the Best out of the System for Caregivers and Practitioners by Micheal Rosenwald, Phd and Beth Riley, MSW
• The Foster Parenting Toolbox
• The Heart Knows Something Different: Teenage Voices from the Foster Care System by Al Desetta
• Families Change: A Book for Children Experiencing Termination of Parental Rights by Julie Nelson
• Kids Need to Be Safe: A Book for Children in Foster Care by Julie Nelson
• The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care by Nina Bernstein
• Maybe Days: A Book for Children in Foster Care by Jennifer Wilgocki
• Parenting Someone Else’s Child by Ann Stressman

Memoirs/Personal Stories

• Beneath a Tall Tree by Jean A.S. Strauss
• Building A Bridge: Stories About Connections Between Parents and Foster Parents from Youth Communication
• Wanting a Child by Jill Bialosky
• Somebody’s Someone by Regina Louise
• Be My Baby by Susan Anderson
• Tender Mercies: Inside the World of a Child Abuse Investigator by Keith N. Richards
• Life for Me Ain’t Been No Crystal Stair: One Family’s Passage Through the Child Welfare System by Susan Sheehan
• Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Scheeres
• Three Little Words: A Memoir by Ashely Rhodes Courter
• Black Baby White Hands: A View from the Crib by Jaija Joh

Multi-Cultural Families

• Of Many Colors: Portraits of Multiracial Families by Gigi Kaeser and Peggy Gillespe
• Black White Other Biracial Americans by Lise Funderberg
• I’m Chocolate, You’re Vanilla: Raising Healthy Black and Biracial Children in a Race-Conscious World by Marguerite A. Wright
• Boys Into Men: Raising Our African American Teenage Sons by Nancy Boyd-Franklin
• Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption Edited by Jane Jeong Tranka
• Inside Transracial Adoption by Gail Steinberg
• Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption, and Orphanage Care in China by Kay Ann Johnson
• Half and Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural by Claudine O’Hearn

Last modified: February 28, 2012

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