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Teen Book Spotlight--Adoption & Foster Families!!!

Our teen book spotlight this week is on books that are all about adoption and foster families!!  Let’s face it, love ‘em or hate ‘em, where would we be without our families?  One of the things I love about YA is that there is such diversity throughout the collection and when it comes to books that feature families and family life, you might read a story that features a family that may be different from your own or maybe you will get to read about family that is just like the one you love to be a part of.  The titles this week take a look at families that are created through adoption and fostering and are amazing!  These books and more can be found by searching the catalog using the search tag #yafamilystories as well as on Libby and Hoopla.  Check back next week for a new teen book spotlight and if you have any book suggestions, please let us know!!

How To Save a Life by Sara Zarr--Seventeen-year-old Jill is still torn up over her father's recent death. As a result, when she learns her mother is planning to adopt a still-unborn child, she instantly becomes resentful toward both her mother and Mandy, the child's 19-year-old mother. Determined to dislike Mandy and motivated by grief, Jill hires an investigator who uncovers Mandy's darkest secrets. Rather than feeling justified Jill feels more confused than ever, a feeling that grows as she learns more about Mandy and her motivations. In alternating chapters, Jill and Mandy offer their perspectives on the situation, exploring themes of love, loss, and family while Mandy tries to find a better life for her baby – and possibly discovers a better one for herself in the process.

The How and the Why by Cynthia Hand--Cassandra McMurtrey has a family consisting of a loving mother and a dad-joke-cracking father--the best kind of parents she could wish for--but still, she is adopted, and is haunted by the desire to know who she is and where she came from. Then she discovers a series of letters--sealed up in the Idaho Bureau of Vital Records--written by an unknown teenage girl eighteen years ago.

What I Carry by Jennifer Longo--In her final year of foster care, seventeen-year-old Muir tries to survive her senior year before aging out of the system. As she becomes closer to her latest foster mother, meets a new friend, and even finds love, she worries that she's getting too involved and fights the urge to flee the closest thing she's ever had to a home.

Losers Bracket by Chris Crutcher--Seventeen-year-old Annie Boot cannot seem to get away from her birth family despite living a moderately decent life with her foster parents. But she keeps getting drawn back into the drama. After an argument at a swim meet, her nephew goes missing, and it takes the combined efforts of everyone to put the pieces of the puzzle together to get him home safe.

Somebody’s Daughter by Marie Myung-Ok Lee--All her life, Korea-born Lee Soon-Min (renamed Sarah by her adoptive parents) has been told that her biological parents were killed in an automobile crash. When nineteen-year-old Sarah travels to Korea, she is determined to discover the truth about her past. She visits the agency that orchestrated her adoption as well as broadcasts her predicament on a local television show. In reality, Sarah was abandoned on the steps of a Seoul firehouse soon after her mother, penniless and jilted by her American lover, gave birth. 

All the Broken Pieces by Ann Burg--Two years after being airlifted out of Vietnam in 1975, Matt Pin is haunted by the terrible secret he left behind and, now, in a loving adoptive home in the United States, a series of profound events forces him to confront his past.