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More copies of this ISBNNo Biking in the House Without a Helmetby Melissa Fay Greene
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Dispatches from the new front lines of parenthood When the two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene confided to friends that she and her husband planned to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria to add to their four children at home, the news threatened to place her, she writes, “among the greats: the Kennedys, the McCaughey septuplets, the von Trapp family singers, and perhaps even Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, gave birth to sixty-nine children in eighteenth-century Russia.” Greene is best known for her books on the civil rights movement and the African HIV/AIDS pandemic. Shes been praised for her “historians urge for accuracy,” her “sociologists sense of social nuance,” and her “writerly passion for the beauty of language.” But Melissa and her husband have also pursued a more private vocation: parenthood. “We so loved raising our four children by birth, we didnt want to stop. When the clock started to run down on the home team, we brought in ringers.” When the number of children hit nine, Greene took a break from reporting. She trained her journalists eye upon events at home. Fisseha was riding a bike down the basement stairs; out on the porch, a squirrel was sitting on Jesses head; vulgar posters had erupted on bedroom walls; the insult niftam (the Amharic word for “snot”) had led to fistfights; and four non-native-English-speaking teenage boys were researching, on Moms computer, the subject of “saxing.” “At first I thought one of our trombone players was considering a change of instrument,” writes Greene. “Then I remembered: they cant spell.” Using the tools of her trade, she uncovered the true subject of the “saxing” investigation, inspiring the chapter “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but Couldnt Spell.” A celebration of parenthood; an ingathering of children, through birth and out of loss and bereavement; a relishing of moments hilarious and enlightening—No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is a loving portrait of a unique twenty first-century family as it wobbles between disaster and joy. Review:"With four children of their own, Atlanta journalist Greene (There Is No Me Without You) and her husband, a criminal defense attorney, gradually adopted five more — one from Bulgaria and four from Ethiopia — to create a roiling, largehearted family unit. In her whimsical, hilarious account, she pokes fun at her own initial cluelessness regarding the adoption process, which the couple began after Greene suffered a miscarriage in her mid-40s; they procured an 'adoption doctor' to advise them on the risks of adopting institutionalized babies from Russian and Bulgarian orphanages (e.g., the baby's head measurements and appearance in videos might indicate developmental problems). After several trips to a rural Bulgarian orphanage, they brought home a four-year-old Roma boy they renamed Jesse; Greene writes frankly about her own moments of 'post-adoption panic' and doubts about attachment. Subsequently, as her older children headed out to college, new ones arrived: the humanitarian HIV/AIDS crisis in Ethiopia resolved the couple to adopt healthy, five-year-old Helen, orphaned when her family was decimated by the disease; then nine-year-old Fisseha, and two brothers, Daniel and Yosef, whom Greene's older biological son Lee befriended while working at another Ethiopian orphanage. The family often felt like a 'group home,' as Greene depicts engagingly, yet despite periods of tension and strife, such as the discovery of living parents and sibling rivalry, Greene captures the family's triumphant shared delight in one another's differences. (May)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Synopsis:When the two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene confided to friends that she and her husband planned to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria to add to their four children at home, the news threatened to place her, she writes, “among the greats: the Kennedys, the McCaughey septuplets, the von Trapp family singers, and perhaps even Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, gave birth to sixty-nine children in eighteenth-century Russia.” Greene is best known for her books on the civil rights movement and the African HIV/AIDS pandemic. But she and her husband have also pursued a more private vocation: parenthood. “We so loved raising our four children by birth, we didnt want to stop. When the clock started to run down on the home team, we brought in ringers.” A celebration of parenthood; an ingathering of children, through birth and out of loss and bereavement; a relishing of moments hilarious and enlightening—No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is a loving portrait of a unique twenty-first-century family as it wobbles between disaster and joy. Synopsis:The Joyous, Honest, and Compulsively Readable Account of a Great, Loving, Not-Uncomplicated, and Ever-Expanding Family “This is my twenty-first year in elementary school,” the story begins. “For twenty-one years, Ive carried in cupcakes, enclosed checks, and provided emergency phone numbers.” The award-winning author Melissa Fay Greene and her husband, Don Samuel, an attorney, lived in Atlanta with their four children. By most standards, that was a lot of kids. But when their oldest left for college, Melissa and Don knew an empty nest was nigh. Don proposed “backfilling”: “Every time one leaves, lets bring in another!” In eight years, five children joined the family from orphanages in Bulgaria and Ethiopia. Don referred to their end of the hallway as “the international concourse.” If one child complained and a second piped up, he said: “Another country heard from!” “While parents our age graduated from elementary school,” writes Melissa, “welike the dimwitted students of yorewere held back, forced to repeat grades with people a lot younger.” The mix of age groups, genders, races, cultures, and languages generates a life of bedlam and hilarity, tears and love. When Melissa discovers that someone has researched “saxing” on her computer, she thinks one of the familys musicians is considering switching instruments. The true subject of investigation, by a nonnative-English-speaking teenage boy, inspires chapter seven: “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but Couldnt Spell Sex.” No Biking in the House Without a Helmet joins a great tradition of domestic comediesfrom James Thurbers My Life and Hard Times to Erma Bombeck, Calvin Trillin, and David Sedaris, with elements of The Blind Side. Its world-class reporting from the ridiculous front lines of parenthood. About the AuthorMelissa Fay Greene is the author of Praying for Sheetrock, The Temple Bombing, Last Man Out, and There Is No Me Without You. Two of her books have been finalists for the National Book Award, and New York Universitys journalism department named Praying for Sheetrock one of the top one hundred works of journalism in the twentieth century. She has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Good Housekeeping, Newsweek, Life, Readers Digest, Redbook, and Salon, among others. She and her husband, Don Samuel, have nine children and live in Atlanta. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!Average customer rating based on 3 comments:
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