What Does Adopted Mean?
A Young Child’s Guide to Adoption

by Edith Nicholls

The idea behind this book is excellent. It is designed to help younger children who have been adopted or are facing adoption to understand their situation and come to terms with it. The term younger children is taken to mean children aged under eight or older children with moderate learning difficulties or problems relating to conceptualisation.

The subject matter is divided into three main themes. The first looks at parenting. The second looks at the court process, as it may seem daunting to a small child. The third concerns what it is like to be adopted. It ends with a quiz.

The subject matter is divided up appropriately, and everything which needs to be covered is included. The book is written simply and directly in language a child should be able to readily understand. The lay-out is clear and the design work is good.

We can therefore recommend the book as well suited to its purpose. But the review would not be complete without mentioning the irritating bits. At certain points, the style is folksy and comes over as rather patronising. It tells its readers that they may be feeling bored with the contents, for example, and inserts the occasional “Phew” (Has anyone used that word since Biggles?) or “Yawn, yawn”.

It is our view that children will either consider the contents important to themselves, and find such comments unnecessary, or they will have discarded the book, and the jokey insertions won’t help.

Similarly, we doubt whether the use of terms such “The Legal Bit” and “The Parent Thing” will actually make the book more attractive to young readers. We would suggest keeping it straight and simple. We haven’t yet tried it on children, and will revise our views if we find they like these ways of putting things.

A more difficult one is the use of the term “born-to” families, parents etc. There is no ideal term, but we would prefer “birth” parents etc. “Born-to” jarred on first reading, and it still jarred on re-reading.

Maybe a re-print could tidy up these points, but the book is well worth getting for its purpose anyway.

Russell House Publishing (2005) ISBN 1-903855-73-X