Growing Up Adopted

The author of Being Adopted , an adoptive parent herself, brings her impressive interviewing talent and psychological insight to a book for older readers, broadening her inquiry to interviews with 14 adoptees, ages eight to 48. In each, whether it is interracial adoption or not, whether the person has searched for birthparents or not, the talk inevitably turns to when and how the information was revealed and what it has meant for that individual over time. For some it has been just a fact, for others it has been an obsession. This is a book of striking emotional force, some of it coming from the reader's gradual realization of how often the actions on both sides--parent as well as child--stem from unnecessary fear of abandonment. Ages 9-up. (Sept.)