No Biking in the House without a Helmet

    In this book, Melissa Fay Greene tells the story of how she and her husband came to adopt five children internationally in addition to their four biological children. Much of the early part of the book is taken up with the mechanics of international adoption, and so does not apply directly to parents such as ourselves who adopt domestically through social services. However, the more substantial part of the book is the story of how the family incorporated five new members, not as babies, but as children who had already had families of their own. As her family expands to an unwieldy size, Greene begins asking herself, and the reader, a basic question: are they becoming a family, or a group home?

    By the book’s end, as one might expect, they are clearly a family, but Greene offers no formula as to how they got there. Throughout the book, and without explanation, Greene inserts chapters on the developing personalities of each of her children, along with others recounting various anecdotes in the family’s history. Taken together, these explain how they became a family: each child is loved and appreciated for who he or she is as a unique person; and even more, a family becomes a family by acting like a family.