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    No Biking in the House Without a Helmet
    No Biking in the House Without a Helmet
    No Biking in the House Without a Helmet
    Audiobook12 hours

    No Biking in the House Without a Helmet

    Written by Melissa Fay Greene

    Narrated by Coleen Marlo

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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 Melissa and her husband have also pursued a more private vocation: parenthood. 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 26, 2011
    ISBN9781452671888
    No Biking in the House Without a Helmet
    Author

    Melissa Fay Greene

    Melissa Fay Greene is the author of Praying for Sheetrock; The Temple Bombing; Last Man Out; There Is No Me Without You: One Woman’s Odyssey to Rescue her Country’s Children; and No Biking in the House Without A Helmet. Her honors include two National Book Award nominations, a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, the ACLU National Civil Liberties Award, the Hadassah Myrtle Wreath Award, the Salon Book Award, Elle Magazine’s Readers’ Prize, the Georgia Author Award, and a Dog Writers of America Award. She is a current Guggenheim Fellow.

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    Reviews for No Biking in the House Without a Helmet

    4/5

    57 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      After having four children, Melissa Greene and her husband Danny, decide to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria. This leads on to the adoption of another four children, making nine in total. The family is not without its ups and downs and this is an honest account of the difficulties encountered in this Jewish family. One thing that made me uncomfortable was the circumcision of one of the adopted children. The family must have a substantial income from the descriptions of the things that they have along with all the overseas travel undertaken. The comparision of the circumstances that the adoptive children came from and then the huge culture shock they must have experienced coming into a rich American family are interesting.
    • 5/5
      When Melissa Fay Greene was in her mid-forties and beginning to see the edges of the empty nest on her horizon, she wondered if she could squeeze one more child in before her child-bearing years were officially over. She and her criminal defense attorney husband, Donny, both felt like they weren't quite ready to give up the joys of parenting. As it turns out, while her child-bearing years were, in fact, over, her parenting years had only just begun. After much internet research and some freelance writing about the work of international adoption doctors, Melissa traveled to Bulgaria to meet the boy who would be her first adopted son, Jesse. But the couple didn't stop there, when her heart and her writing took her to Africa where she saw the far-reaching effects of the HIV/AIDS crisis leaving unfathomable numbers of both healthy and well children orphaned, Greene knew she and her family could make even more space for children who had no place to go. No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is jam packed with the trials of trying to create a family from children from around the globe, but it's packed with enough heart and humor that more than make up for the hardships. Greene balances her funniest family anecdotes with her more serious struggles to make her adopted children feel loved and appreciated without letting her biological children fall by the wayside as well as her fierce determination that her adopted children not lose touch with their original countries and cultures even as they live their new lives in the U.S. With a family so large and diverse, Greene often worries that she has traded in a family for just another group home where there's not quite enough love to go around, and not enough unity to constitute a family, but No Biking is proof-positive that, ultimately, those worries are unfounded.Greene tells her story with honesty and manages to capture the individuality of each of her children and how they come together as a family all without ever succombing to cheesiness. She captures the joy of a child at being welcomed into a new family but never oversimplifies the challenges of creating a new life for a child that once had a family or spent their entire childhood in an institution. By the end of the book, I was totally captured by this woman and her family who had the courage, determination, and more than enough love to spare to open their hearts and homes to children in need from across the globe and how even though it wasn't always easy, with love and a very good sense of humor they make their decidedly unique family work.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely loved this book. I hope that Ms. Greeene will continue to write more news about her amazing, "international" family. The stories of the kids' families in Ethopia were very poignant.
    • 4/5
      At some point parents are faced with the prospect of the "empty nest syndrome". Some parents deal with it by moving to a big city (like my husband and I did- don't worry though, we told the kids and gave them our new address), some take up new hobbies, and Melissa Fay Greene and her husband met the challenge by adopting children from Bulgaria and Ethiopia, as told in No Biking in the House Without a Helmet.The Samuels (Don is a criminal defense attorney, Melissa a writer) had four children, and their oldest of four Molly was heading off to college, when Melissa began to think what life would be like when they weren't bringing cupcakes, providing emergency phone numbers, or giving standing ovations at the school play.The introduction to the book is hilarious, with Greene recounting her son answering the telephone and yelling "Daddy, it's for you! I think it's a criminal!" Another funny anecdote concerns Greene "helping too much with homework", and groaning "when the teacher's memo (for the science fair project) comes home, glancing at my calendar to see when I'll have time to get it done." When her sixth-grade son's friend calls late at night, she tells him "Lee's asleep. But what did you get for "How does Montesquieu show that self-interest can overawe justice in human affairs?" Lee came home a few days later and informed his mother that she got a 74 on that homework.After having a miscarriage, adoption is discussed. Greene gets on her computer and finds several adoption websites where you can see photos of children available for adoption."Some adoption agencies offered "delivery." You could adopt without leaving your desk! "I'd better be careful not to hit accidentally hit Send," I told Donny. "We could open the door one day and find some little kid standing there with a suitcase."While Greene writes with warm humor, she also writes movingly of her travels first to Bulgaria and later to Ethiopia to bring home two children. She is honest about the challenges faced bringing into their family children who didn't speak English.She inspired her oldest son Lee, and he spent one summer volunteering in the same orphanage from where they got Helen. That chapter of the book was so lovely, this bright, caring young man sharing his talents and time with these kids who adored him. Greene was a little too inspiring though, and Lee called home and asked his parents to take in two older boys who had no one else, and whose chances for adoption were small.The Samuels are a normal family; they love, they laugh, the fight. They went through a particularly bumpy time for awhile when two of the teenage boys were literally fighting and it affected the entire family.Greene is a wonderful writer: honest, empathetic and funny. I fell in love with the Samuel family, no more so than when one of their biological children bemoaned the fact that if they adopted two more Ethiopians he would move farther down the list as fastest runner in the family.This is a beautiful book, a testament to the strength of a loving family, with all the laughs and frustrations that being part of that family entails.
    • 4/5
      After having four children, Melissa Greene and her husband Danny, decide to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria. This leads on to the adoption of another four children, making nine in total. The family is not without its ups and downs and this is an honest account of the difficulties encountered in this Jewish family. One thing that made me uncomfortable was the circumcision of one of the adopted children. The family must have a substantial income from the descriptions of the things that they have along with all the overseas travel undertaken. The comparision of the circumstances that the adoptive children came from and then the huge culture shock they must have experienced coming into a rich American family are interesting.
    • 5/5
      It may be a cliche to say that you laughed so hard you cried, except that I did while reading this book. Several times. Greene tells the story of how her family created itself with such wonderful humor that you can't help but fall in love with them all.Of course, a book like this can't be all sunshine and smiles, and Greene doesn't pull her punches when relating stories of family tribulation. Nor does she leave us in any doubt that children around the world face horrifying poverty and hunger every day.If this book has a flaw, it's that it's a little uneven. In the midst of discussing the process of adopting one child, the narrative jumps back to relate an anecdote involving an older child, or Green's own childhood. These leaps never detract from the overall story, but the transitions are sometimes jarring.Another cliche: this book is both hysterical and heartbreaking. But mostly it is about how family bonds are about love and effort more than blood.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. I found myself wishing it was longer so I could spend more time with this unique family.Melissa Fay Greene and her husband had 4 biological children. After a miscarriage, they began to look into adoption. She decided to write an article about international adoption, and traveled to Bulgaria to meet Christian - a 4 year old boy living in an orphanage. That started it all. They adopted him and gradually adopted 4 more children from Ethiopia.Her family's story brings to life the blessings and the trials of international adoption - and the challenges of adopting older children. Other adoptive families may not have a family this large, but the issues that come up will be similar. This book also sheds light on the real lives of children in other countries, and the organizations that try to help those children. Greene's biological children were enthusiastic about the adoptions and they seemed to learn a lot along the way. Sure, there were problems, but there is a lot of love to go around in this family. I laughed and cried while reading their stories.Recommended to anyone interested in international adoption, or to anyone interested in reading about large, multi-cultural families.(I received this book from the Amazon Vine Program.)