Rating: 
Summary: A review of the reviews
Review: While garnering some positive reviews from people who do not claim to be adoptive parents, this book is very controversial to those who do make that claim. In fact, it gave at least one adoptive parent "the creeps." But everybody seems to agree that Ms. Prager has a wonderful way with words.But it's the author's eloquence that seems to be cause of the controversy. Amidst a journey that is likely to stir some complex emotions in the mind and heart of a 5-year-old adoptee named Lulu, the author translates Lulu's thoughts and feelings into a remarkably articulate prose. This causes disbelief. One questions whether the author has accurately translated her daughter's feelings and then one begins to question whether such a soul-searching back to her roots trip is really appropriate for such a young child. In defense of the author, however, it is really up to her to decide when her daughter is ready for such a trip, and however implausible, it is at least possible that she could read her daughter's mind the way she seems to. But however you feel about this book, it does succeed in challenging those of us with children from China to think about whether, when, and under what circumstances a trip back to China would be appropriate. And for that, I am grateful to Ms. Prager for writing it.
Rating:
Summary: A review of the reviews
Review: While garnering some positive reviews from people who do not claim to be adoptive parents, this book is very controversial to those who do make that claim. In fact, it gave at least one adoptive parent "the creeps." But everybody seems to agree that Ms. Prager has a wonderful way with words. But it's the author's eloquence that seems to be cause of the controversy. Amidst a journey that is likely to stir some complex emotions in the mind and heart of a 5-year-old adoptee named Lulu, the author translates Lulu's thoughts and feelings into a remarkably articulate prose. This causes disbelief. One questions whether the author has accurately translated her daughter's feelings and then one begins to question whether such a soul-searching back to her roots trip is really appropriate for such a young child. In defense of the author, however, it is really up to her to decide when her daughter is ready for such a trip, and however implausible, it is at least possible that she could read her daughter's mind the way she seems to. But however you feel about this book, it does succeed in challenging those of us with children from China to think about whether, when, and under what circumstances a trip back to China would be appropriate. And for that, I am grateful to Ms. Prager for writing it.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written but inconsistent and very disturbing
Review: While very, very well written, this book is both inconsistent, disappointing and disturbing. The writer, an established author, takes her nearly five year old daughter adopted from China, back to Wuhu, the small city in which she was abandoned at birth and adopted (by the author) some eight or nine months later. But what exactly is the point of the trip? The child is very young and her perceptions, though her mother has her "saying" very mature things, are that of a preschooler -- they are very limited and often even very confused. The mother tells us at the beginning of the book that her daughter is happy, easy, terrific, and generally well adjusted. Yet at the end of the book, when the pair return to New York another mother of an adopted Chinese child mentions how astonishing it is that the "black cloud" over Lulu (the child)'s head has been lifted by a trip to China to find her roots. Strikingly, there did not appear to be a black cloud before the trip, nor does the author really get into how this trip back has changed or altered herself or her daughter in any significant way other than to go on an interesting trip to China and write and write and write about what she saw, ate, and what illnesses and injuries befell the two. The reason for this is clear: this child is too young to really understand what is going on and what her mother intends for her to take away from this journey -- that mush is clear throughout. With meticulous detail, Prager tells us every moment of her journey, right down to the American junk food available in the hotel shops she and her daughter frequent. But at the heart of this volume, there is a void and the void is a child far too immature at this particular moment in time to connect with her past and a mother far too eager to embellish upon what she assumes her daughter is feeling and thinking -- something adoptive parents would be wise to avoid. In some ways, the book is even chilling: the child "connects" with workers in the hotel the pair stay in in Wuhu and assumes that they must be her biological parents and no one really corrects her very dangerous thinking. And sadder still is this: the publication of this book has effectively closed the door in the world of publishing for a writer with an older and more ready child adopted from China to publish an account of a trip back to the child's literal and emotional roots in the country in which she was born. For a nine or ten year old's take on this type of a momentous journey would be so much richer and more intense than little Lulu who appears to be along mostly for her mother's ride. Finally, there is no mention of one stark fact: there are over 40,000 adopted Chinese children in the United States now and their adoption stories are often written and reported. Do we have the right to do that when children who are too young to say or know whether they want or feel comfortable with their stories being publicized? These are their stories, after all and will be the fabric of their lives as they grow.
This reviewer is the parent of a six year old girl adopted from the People's Republic of China.
Rating: 
Summary: Disturbing
Review: Wuhu Diary records the author's trip to Wuhu China with the daughter whom she adopted from that city. Adopted as an infant, Ms. Prager's daughter is five-years-old during the narrative, and has been coming to grips with being Chinese and American, and the daughter of a single white woman. When I heard the author interviewed on NPR I felt that the daughter was much too young for such an emotionally demanding trip and after reading the book I am all the more convinced that this is true. Not only does the daughter go to an orphanage (not the same one where she stayed ) but she is shown the bridge where she was abandoned. Before the trip she had thought she'd been left at a hospital, small comfort but at least some comfort. Now the daughter must, at five years old, process the truth of her abandonment to the elements and to sheer chance. I find the psychodrama unleashed upon the daughter positively appalling, and I only hope that she has a therapeutic avenue available to her.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbing
Review: Wuhu Diary records the author's trip to Wuhu China with the daughter whom she adopted from that city. Adopted as an infant, Ms. Prager's daughter is five-years-old during the narrative, and has been coming to grips with being Chinese and American, and the daughter of a single white woman. When I heard the author interviewed on NPR I felt that the daughter was much too young for such an emotionally demanding trip and after reading the book I am all the more convinced that this is true. Not only does the daughter go to an orphanage (not the same one where she stayed ) but she is shown the bridge where she was abandoned. Before the trip she had thought she'd been left at a hospital, small comfort but at least some comfort. Now the daughter must, at five years old, process the truth of her abandonment to the elements and to sheer chance. I find the psychodrama unleashed upon the daughter positively appalling, and I only hope that she has a therapeutic avenue available to her.
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