Rating: 
Summary: You'll laugh, you might not cry, but you'll think
Review: Dan Savage is the porn-surfing, leather-bar pinball-playing partner of Terry, who loves dance music and works in a bookstore. This book -- fabulously irreverent, often touching, and never taking itself more seriously than really necessary -- is the story of Dan and Terry's odyssey to adopt a baby. This is not some cloying docudrama about two sanitized gay men and their quest to make the world a better place by adopting a child no one else wants. Dan and Terry are a couple of urban gay guys. Like most everyone else, they want a healthy baby. Savage writes in candid, if-you-can't-deal-with-it, take-a-hike fashion about things like sex, beer, drag, and monogamy. He also makes short work of Christian fundamentalists, chilly relatives, and gay political orthodoxy. His cutting, self-deprecating gay wit makes this book fast, giggly, and compulsively readable. At times I felt like I was engrossed in a piece of beach-blanket paperback fiction. You have to be fairly uptight not to find yourself smiling through this book. But this is also a human story. Dan and Terry are two intelligent, financially stable guys with a messy condo, a sense of humor, and the human urge to deepen the meaning of their own lives by pouring themselves into nurturing and shaping a new one. They wisecrack through tough situations, fight over dumb things, worry when necessary, and take their work and family obligations seriously. They have a large, loving circle of parents, step-parents, siblings, and friends. Why shouldn't they adopt? This book isn't intended as a detailed legal, political, and moral argument on behalf of gay adoption, though Savage disposes with the most specious and disingenuous complaints of right-wing windbags. The most telling point is that no one demands perfection from straights -- coupled or single -- who often bring kids into far more adverse and dysfunctional environments than the home that's being made by these two gay dads. (As Savage puts it with typical matter-of-fact dispatch, "Straight people all over the world have kids for ... much worse reasons every day. They fall down drunk and get up pregnant.") Dan and Terry are really no more, no less than a competent, comfortable, committed, funny couple who have their own good reasons for wanting to share their lives with a child. That, in the end, is the central message of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: very cool
Review: If you are looking for an interesting and very funny book, I would reccommend this. It is interesting to see the process one has to go through in order to adopt a child - gay or straight - and in his inimitable style, Dan Savage makes this an easy book to get through, while giving you many funny anecdotes to laugh at. I love his advice column, and since I am not a religious freak, I am not offended by his homosexuality. I think it is one of the truly progressive things America has to offer, allowing same sex adoption, and this book is an interesting account of it.
Rating:
Summary: He's a great guy
Review: Just read this book and thoroughly enjoyed it. Decided to come on here to see what people thought, and was extatic to see most people enjoyed it. Of course there was the totally predictable religious loon who had to bring his dogmatic Christian idiocy to the table, but for most people, they will simply find a humorous and touching account of adopting a child by one of Americas funniest writers.
Rating:
Summary: Honest, insightful and fun
Review: I got this book on a recommendation from a friend. I found it to be a very touching story. Dan Savage doesn't lose any of his wit or sarcasm, although we do see "the softer side of Dan" in this book as he shares his thoughts and feelings of going through the adoption process. Whether your gay or straight, this is a good book for prospective parents, or even people who are just curious about parenting and open adoption. I found this book to be honest, open, touching, funny and insightful.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Book!
Review: I have always admired Dan Savage for his cynicism and bold truth-telling as a sex-columnist. After reading his story of the adoption of his and Terry's and Melissa's son D.J., I now admire him as a son, a boyfriend, a father, a human.
Rating:
Summary: Real Parents, Real Kid, Real Funny (And True!)
Review: Dan Savage is known for "telling it like it is" in his sex columns and he tells the story of his child's adoption in the same funny and disarming manner. This is the best account I have read of the experience of a couple pursuing open adoption. From the "pre-adoption" group meetings to the "call" to the scene at the hospital when their son's birthmother takes her leave, Savage gives his readers a glimpse of the adoption process at its most excruciating moments, all the time making you laugh (or bringing you to tears). This book is for all open-minded readers interested in adoption, gay or straight.
Rating:
Summary: D.J.'s Lucky to Have Dan and Terry as Dads
Review: I picked up Dan Savage's book because I work with young children and love them. I'm a straight female mother. I read Dan's book non-stop...it is hilarious. It's a wonderful look at a committed gay relationship...so very much like any straight committed relationship. Here's a glimpse of what it's like to be an openly gay couple, and then to be gay parents in a society which is starting to rid itself of homophobic prejudices. To the publisher: PLEASE have Dan Savage write another book about his son D.J.'s early years!!!!
Rating:
Summary: A must-read for future gay parents
Review: I loved this book because of its optimism and clarity. Dan Savage is very funny and yet he goes straight to the point and tells his story in a way that I'm sure any of us will find familar once we decide to become a parent. I liked the fact that the people involve are young as opposed to the many other gay parenting books I've read in which the parents are in their 40s ("The Velveteen Father" & "Getting Simon"). Not all of us want to wait that long! It was also very useful to read about open adoptions, and I wish Savage wrote a follow up with the first years of "the kid." I strongly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Read It
Review: This is a very special book. The humor cannot be denied - I actually laughed until I was in tears several times. Both here and in his column, Dan Savage uses humor to convey profound wisdom on the human condition. The Kid made me reflect on what it means to be a parent, and on the complexity of familial bonds. Gay or straight, biological or adoptive, all parents can learn something from each other. I wish the intolerant people who oppose gay adoption (usually along with "feminism" and "interracial" relations, by the way) could be forced to read and comprehend this book. But since that will never happen, the rest of us should just keep laughing.
Rating:
Summary: Real people
Review: I totally enjoyed this book. Dan Savage gives us a heartfelt and honest story. This is not a story of do-gooders helping humanity by adopting needy children. This is not a story of a perfect couple with their state-sactified lives being granted the child of their dreams with pastel walls and bunnies. This is real people with solid relationships but fights, doubts, egos. This is the random happenings of life... getting a child when the house isnt bought yet, when the timing is crazy, from a birth mother who is sullen and diffident. This is heartwrenching "what do you say to a woman who is giving you her baby?". An excellent book that is not a "how-to", but an insightful journey through open adoption. It seems that similar adoptions, where the birth mother gets to choose the adoptive family, and get updates on her child, are only available in one or two states. I wish there were something similar in Canada. It seems so humane and respectful of all involved. As I am considering adoption myself, and am a bi single woman, I found this book hopeful and informative. Yes there are birth mothers out there who don't want perfect Christian families. This is a great book for those who are hoping to adopt, or just those who would like to sit down to a great story wittily written. Very readable.
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