When the number of children hit nine, Greene took a break from reporting. She trained her journalist's eye upon events at home. Fisseha was riding a bike down the basement stairs; out on the porch, a squirrel was sitting on Jesse's 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 Mom's 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 can’t 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 Couldn’t 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. Selected Reading Questionnaire.

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this book about overseas adoption so much, but I did. It was a personal, entertaining, poignant, funny, heart-wrenching, frustrating, charming, and funny learning experience....all the things that make parenthood and life worthwhile.

Both the author and the narrator did a great job with the rhythm and variation in the book. ( )

Award winning journalist Melissa Fay Greene and her husband already had four biological children when they decided to adopt a little boy from Bulgaria. Rather than accept the "empty nest" that their home threatened to become when the oldest children headed off to college, the couple kept adopting. The next child was a little girl from Ethiopia. By the time Greene and her husband were finished adopting, their family included a total of nine kids from three continents.

The Bottom Line: Melissa Fay Greene's writing style is approachable for most readers. She writes with humor, tenderness, and honesty as she covers both the joys and the challenges of raising a large family. Recommended for everyone interested in the study of families. Also, for potential adoptive parents.

For the complete review, including Book Club notes, please visit the Mini Book Bytes Book Review Blog. ( )

Very good. fascinating look at a multi racial, multi cultural family. ( )

Several other reviewers have mentioned the strengths of this book, and I mostly agree with them. Many of the anecdotes that Greene relates are funny, and well told. She is clear about the ongoing difficulties of parenting children adopted at older ages. Her personality comes through as being warm and friendly. On the other hand, the narrative is strongly anecdotal, without a strong connecting thread holding it together. She also seems to randomly throw in stories about her biological children so that they won't feel left out. (All of the children seem charming, and she is explicit that they gave permission for each story in the book.)

The reason I brought this down to 1 star is simple - child trafficking. I have adopted older children. I also worked at an adoption agency for 5 years, during which time I watched the Ethiopia program. It started strong, with lots of children being cleared for adoption and leaving the country. Then those children started telling stories that didn't match their paperwork. The US Embassy in Addis Ababa started asking questions. At this writing, there are no reputable agencies who continue to facilitate adoptions from Ethiopia. Too many children were trafficked, birth parents were deceived about where their children were going and why, too many questions about the people who "found" children for orphanages.

Four of Greene's children were adopted from Ethiopia, and each story has huge red flags all over it. The only time in the entire book that someone asks if they did wrong, she brushes it off as no big deal. She's wrong. Selling children is always a big deal. I'm amazed that a prize winning journalist is so clueless about the ethics of international adoption (she never mentions the subject, the controversies, the very real arguments that divide the field). I'm appalled that the mother of internationally adoption children wouldn't care about the ethics of the situation. I urge interested readers to consult websites like PEAR (Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform) and this blog post (http://scoopingitup.blogspot.com/p/considering-ethiopian-international-or.html) for the other side of this issue. ( )