Rating: 
Summary: New mom truly understands the love shared in this book!
Review: I'm not sure how I came into contact with this book, but once I did, I fell in love! I haven't read it in a few years as I've lost track of where it is, but I have the entire book memorized anyway...Now that I'm a mom myself, I wish I could again read and fall in love with this story once again.
Rating:
Summary: a classic
Review: i've had this book for about 10 years and continue to read it every time i get home on a break. i've worn the cover off with so many reads yet i continue to cry everytime i read the story dealing with love, adoption, and the true meaning of family...
Rating:
Summary: Discontinued High School Treasure
Review: In 1991 our local high school was selling off some old books from their library. I picked up a book with a rather sad looking cover. Upon opening it I saw that it was titled, "The Family Nobody Wanted" and it was covered in scribble. The scribble on this 1954 copyright says this, "Wonderful book to read! This well be one of the best books you have ever read! Oh Yea!; Good Book, Read it!; This book is real cool!; This book is great and great for a book report!; Kid! Read this book! It is stunning!; Notice everybody! This is the a real cool book, so people take head and read this book!; This is a great book and you will not regret reading it!" There are about 20 more reviews written throughout the book by high school students. With that in mind I figured I had better buy it for the 25 cents they were asking. I was so delighted to read it but had misplaced it just short of finishing during a move. My husband has read it and cried, laughed, giggled, all while learning what a struggle this family must have gone through to adopt and deal with prejudices. I have recently found it in our move to Germany and I am over joyed to have finished it finally. I hold this book as a treasure in my life representing the true nature of humanity. What a wonderful story! Thanks for trusting your instincts Helen Doss and sharing your personal life with us! What a blessing.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT
Review: My mom read this to me when I was 5 and I can still remember some of the funny stories. Now I am 25 & in the process of adopting my own family. I want a copy for both my mom & myself.
Rating:
Summary: An all-time favorite
Review: Only my closest friends are given the privilege of borrowing this delightfully written true story; the long out-of-print and (before the days of the internet) irreplaceable book has been one of my most closely guarded treasures since childhood. Any family with several small children, of course, will have a store of hilarious anecdotes; children raised with love combine insouciant joy with freedom from adult assumptions and habits of thought, so that any house full of love and children is a house full of unpredictability and laughter. But Helen Doss, unlike most parents, can capture her children in her writing and pass the joy on to us. I don't know anyone who has managed to read the book through without at some point laughing to the point of tears.But the book is much more than a connection of Readers' Digest anecdotes strung together. Ms. Doss reveals, through deft and honest touches, her own weaknesses and struggles, her impetuosity and her grit. She communicates with power the pain that can come in so many different ways to a woman with a tremendous need to love, especially when obstacles - infertility, unreasonable adoption agencies, poverty - rise up to keep her from satisfying that need. And the portrait of her husband Carl, who changes as much as the children do, is vivid and telling. The Carl who says, "Let's take 'em all" at the end of the book is a very different Carl from the one who agrees to the first adoption largely to humor his wife and to keep her from moping weepily and endlessly about the house, and whose annual refrain for many years is, "This is the last one!" You expect him to come on board, of course; but his path is a bit surprising and most revealing of the essence of the man. In particular his ability to close ranks against outside inteference shows the degree to which his love for his family is as strong as his wife's, however differently it might be expressed. As a family memoir alone, it would be a classic. But because the children were of mixed racial ancestry - in the 'forties and 'fifties - the Doss family became an unwilling catalyst for the ignorance and prejudice of the time. It is part of the Doss magic that the love in the family was strong enough to triumph over the unpleasant incidents, so that those incidents enriched, rather than poisoned, the Doss childhoods. (Not that this made them less unpleasant, of course.) The book is never preachy. Nevertheless, it is a vivid documentary of how racism was built into the attitudes of even "nice" people of that time. It is a sermon of a kind, a sermon lived out in the lives of the Doss family. It is a primer on how to overcome evil with good, a standing lesson to a nation still struggling with racial resentment. But the genuinely remarkable thing is that, despite the frequent intrusions suffered by the family from racially prejudiced outsiders, the book is not about race. No doubt this is because the Doss family was never about race. When the book crosses your mind in the days after you've closed it - and it will, frequently - it will not be as a book about race. It will be as a book about a uniquely special family and about the triumph of love and joy and grace and laughter over whatever might vainly try to overcome them.
Rating:
Summary: My Inspiration
Review: Over five years ago, on a homeschool fieldtrip, I came across a pile of discarded library books. The pile was going to be taken to the recycling factory, the next day. An avid reader, my interest was not only in the amount of books sitting there in boxes, but also in the many old and worn looking books. Being told I could look through and take any books I wanted, I quickly picked up one called "The Family Nobody Wanted" by Helen Doss, and continued looking. On the way home I started reading the book and haven't put it down. Since that cloudy day over five years ago, I continue to read and enjoy the story of Helen Doss and her wonderful family. I am inspired over and over as she displays constant joy and patience in her children. I've always wanted a large family, and with her as my hero, I hope to one day be a mother to twelve children also!
Rating:
Summary: My Inspiration
Review: Over five years ago, on a homeschool fieldtrip, I came across a pile of discarded library books. The pile was going to be taken to the recycling factory, the next day. An avid reader, my interest was not only in the amount of books sitting there in boxes, but also in the many old and worn looking books. Being told I could look through and take any books I wanted, I quickly picked up one called "The Family Nobody Wanted" by Helen Doss, and continued looking. On the way home I started reading the book and haven't put it down. Since that cloudy day over five years ago, I continue to read and enjoy the story of Helen Doss and her wonderful family. I am inspired over and over as she displays constant joy and patience in her children. I've always wanted a large family, and with her as my hero, I hope to one day be a mother to twelve children also!
Rating:
Summary: The best book I'v ever read!!!!!
Review: The first time I read this book I was about 9, I kept the book for 9 years, until I moved out of my parents house. Then it somehow got misplaced, I actually cried the first time I tried to look for it and couldn't find it. This book has taught me so much about love and life. I always said that when I got older, even if I could have my own children, I would still adopt, and try to love as much as Helen and Carl did. I've tried to look for this book, but have been unable to find a copy. Besides the birth of my daughter, I think it would be the happiest day in my life if I could find a copy. If anyone out there has one, treasure it, because there are those of us out there who would be truly happy to have one.
Rating:
Summary: Tears to my eyes
Review: This book is one that I will always treasure. I would like to scream to every person,"Please read this book!" I will never forget when my sister told me to read it.(I was going through a bad time) It has changed my life. I would like to meet one of the children or one of their children, but if you read the book you would know Helen would not be happy. P.S. try a harvest book store, that is how I got my copy.
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Summary: What Happened Next ?
Review: This book is the most amazing I have ever read. Unfortunately, I lost my copy a few years back when I lent it to a friend. I'd like to know what happened to the children once they were all grown up and what paths their lives had led them to.
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