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Title details for No Biking in the House Without a Helmet by Melissa Fay Greene - Available

No Biking in the House Without a Helmet

by Melissa Fay Greene
Coleen Marlo
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 26, 2011

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781452621883
      • File size: 354726 KB
      • Duration: 12:19:00

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      It's hard to decide what's more infectious about this production--Melissa Fay Greene's writing or narrator Coleen Marlo's enthusiasm. Greene demonstrates her prowess at transforming nonfiction into a gripping story. In this book she writes about her family of four biological and five adopted children, and the joy and baggage that accompany them all. Whether discussing "boingy hair," her Ethiopian adoptees' athletic skills, her puzzlement about the value of Super Bowl tickets, or her children's travails with cable pornography, Greene excels. So does Marlo, who reads with a fervor that makes the listener feel like a guest in Greene's home. Marlo perfectly mixes the family's happiness and inevitable rocky moments in an endearing way, making a wonderful book even better. D.J.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from February 28, 2011
      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.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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