The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

68 NOVEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The Baby with Three Families, Two Countries, and One Promise: An International Adoption Story Julie Gianelloni Connor, Bayou City Press, 2021, $9.99/paperback, e-book available, 40 pages. A picture book for parents to read to their internationally adopted children as toddlers, The Baby with Three Families, Two Countries and One Promise is a story of international adoption. Having grown in recent decades, it is an increasingly viable option for childless couples. The United States is the main receiving country, with requirements and procedures varying depending on the child’s country of origin. As a U.S. diplomat, Julie Gianelloni Connor observed international adoptions in the countries where she served. She saw how some governments strive to protect the rights of children and biological mothers, while others allow unfettered and unregulated adoptions that result in crime and family tragedies. Urged to consider adoption by an American adoptive family she aided, Connor began to think seriously about helping a child, and eventually did so. She wrote the original version of this story years ago to read to her adopted toddler, later adapting it as a generalized version of her own experience. The book emphasizes that although each family’s adoption journey is unique, many of those journeys share the same steps along the adoption path. The author urges parents to adjust and personalize the story to their family’s experience. In her 33-year career with the U.S. Information Agency and the State Department, Julie Gianelloni Connor rose to the Senior Foreign Service. After retiring, she founded Bayou City Press in Houston, which focuses on Houston, travel and international affairs. She is a former member of the FSJ Editorial Board. Tangled Up Jamie Edelbrock (with Nidhom, illustrator), Mascot Books, 2021, $16.95/hardcover, e-book available, 38 pages. Studies show that one in six kids between the ages of 2 and 8 have a mental, behavioral or developmental disorder. Navigating this world as a parent can be scary, but experiencing it as a young child can be even scarier. Tangled Up is intended to lessen the fear of the unknown and shine a positive, peaceful light on mental health and therapy. It shows how the beautiful threads of us can become tangled, and how therapists and counselors are here to help us twirl bravely through life. Jamie Edelbrock and her husband, Eric, who joined the Foreign Service in 2015, serve in Jakarta, where she works as the embassy’s public engagement assistant (press and media). It is the first family posting for the couple and their three daughters. In addition to her work at the embassy, Jamie has been a homeschool mom, preschool director, family ministry director, speaker, author and world traveler. Nidhom is an Indonesian freelance illustrator. Death Can’t Stop Me Elizabeth Carleton, independently published, 2021, $12.99/paperback, e-book available, 335 pages. How would you celebrate your 16th birthday if you knew for a fact that it would be your last? On top of that, you even know exactly how you’ll exit this life: in a “magnicar” crash, just like the fatal accidents your cousins all had after each of them turned 16. That’s the situation that faces Jo Miller, the heroine of this intriguing dystopian science fiction novel. What Jo doesn’t know yet, however, is that her cousins aren’t dead at all, but are working with her grandmother to rebel against a corrupt government. After a tearful family reunion, she joins the Future Assassins Training Center and goes on a deep undercover mission. Yet her role at the FATC only stirs up more troubling questions, even as she gains a greater understanding of her own strength—and the true nature of the regime that had been training her for its own sinister purposes. Elizabeth Carleton currently attends high school in Prague, where her mother, FSO Jennifer Bachus, is chargé d’affaires. Born in Kansas, she has spent most of her life overseas, working in summer hire programs at embassies and experiencing the uniqueness of the Foreign Service as a way of life.