The Unadoptables: Five fantastic children on the adventure of a lifetime

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I enjoyed the orphans' shenanigans in this book. They show true teamwork and love for each other as they come up with ways to overcome obstacles and save themselves. I liked the interesting tidbits of Dutch language and culture that was included since I didn't know much about it to begin with. This story has suspense and mystery galore. It felt a bit slow at parts, but I'm glad I kept on because the end was wonderful. :) I took off a star because the Rotman storyline seemed a bit odd. Why was he so fixated on these specific children? But Milou and her gang can’t wait any longer – there’s a decidedly dastardly looking man who’s arrived to adopt them, and it doesn’t look like he’s the type to want to welcome the orphans into a loving family home. If Milou wants to find her real parents, they’re going to have to run away – and Milou’s going to have to come face to face with her own destiny a lot sooner than she thought… Read an extract: https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-unadoptables-9780241453612/extracts/2322-the-unadoptables I loved this book as it had just enough mystery that it wasn’t obvious what was going to happen but the book still made sense and you really felt compelled to keep on reading. I liked the way it put you on edge to see what was to come.’

The Unadoptables by Hana Tooke, Ayesha L. Rubio | Waterstones The Unadoptables by Hana Tooke, Ayesha L. Rubio | Waterstones

Five babies are abandoned and taken into an orphanage in 19 th century Amsterdam. The eldest , Milou , i s convinced her puppet-making parents didn’t want to leave her . The book describes the adventures of the five ‘unadoptable’ children as they escape the orphanage and search the city for Milou’s birth family. I have to say penguin publishing knows how to get a girl interested in a proof copy sending it with stroopwaffels (my fave's) and tea with the book tied with a beautiful gold ribbon. Nostalgia for my Dutch childhood flashed before my eyes and I had to be the one to take it home. It's also worth noting that the book is set in the late 1800s, so the idea that people would be dismissive of otherness is accurate. Stating a historical fact is not the same as condoning that attitude. The 5 children at the centre of this book would, in all likelihood, have struggled to get adopted in Amsterdam during that time. Not once does Tooke say that they deserve to be left in care for their entire lives. She just understands that society was prejudiced to people of other races or with disabilities. It was also a time in which social care wasn't as carefully curated as it is today. This isn't the current adoption experience but more of an Oliver Twist style adoption process.Welcome to Cast of Thousands! Where did the idea for The Unadoptables come from, and when did you start writing it? PASIÓN ETERNA POR SEM, fue verdaderamente mi personaje favorito. Pensé que [spoiler] iba a terminar con Milou, pero bueno me gustó que termine en un tono super familiar, de hermandad y amistades :,) Those babies were Lotta, Egg, Fenna, Sem and Milou. And although Gassbeek might think they're 'unadoptable', they know their individuality is what makes them so special - and so determined to stay together. Then a most sinister gentleman appears and threatens to tear them apart. The Bad Beginning is the first of 13 volumes in the appropriately named collection, A Series of Unfortunate Events. Personal experience, extensive research and a ready imagination feed into Hana Tooke's eccentric yet convincing settings, and the plot fizzes with excitement and suspense as it rattles through its unexpected twists and turns. But it’s the author's instinctive grasp of what matters in a story for this audience that transforms an entertaining narrative into something really special - a story with depth, integrity and heart in which her characters can really shine. It’s rare for debut middle-grade fiction to read like a classic and offer such consistent child-appeal, but this one pulls it off and will feature on many summer reading lists.

Extract | The Unadoptables by Hana Tooke - Penguin Books UK

All the Dutch phrases and words are great, even if some seem off in the context; kindjes, most of all- not to mention Egg, whose name is Egbert... and let me tell you that Egbert pronounced the way it should be, has no egg sound in there anywhere. I mean seriously, Bert would have made more sense. These things make me suspect that Tooke has been pretty out of practice with the Dutch language and its pronunciation. This does however mean that for anyone who speaks Dutch, the audiobook is something to be avoided. I love Gemma Whelan and this is nothing against her, but I will never understand why it's apparently impossible to teach narrators the foreign words they are supposed to read. So yeah, might want to avoid the audio! In a cold, dark, Amsterdam winter, a group of unique orphans shine brightly with hope and love. Milou and her band of talented friends set out from the Little Tulip Orphanage on a quest for freedom and family, over frozen canals to evade a despicable villain. With a little bit of spookiness and a whole lot of quirkiness, this book will capture your heart! Tegan Tigani, Queen Anne Book Company Most people upset by the title are unlikely to have got much further, but some who read it are also angry about the content. It’s certainly true that the book has a feast of scenes that might trigger heartache in people whose lives have been touched by adoption . I found the ‘line-ups’, in which the orphans are presented, grubby and desperate, to potential adopters, particularly painful.When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day. The idea for Milou’s story popped into my head one wintery morning. Throughout 2017 I’d been struggling through a first draft of a different book, but I think the idea for a gothic story set in Holland had been percolating in my subconscious for a while. Puppets, a windmill – those were vague ideas I had floating around, but I’d been ignoring them to focus on this other story. And then I woke up one morning with the entire plot and cast so vividly in my mind, it felt like the five of them had just crash-landed into my brain, waving their arms, demanding I pay them immediate attention. So, I did. In January 2018 I poured out a very rough first draft of The Unadoptables and was a little bit stunned at how easily it had come. A compelling, gorgeously-written story about the power of friendship and the true meaning of family . . . perfection!" Robin Stevens, author of Murder Most Unladylike The Unadoptables will make you wish your own parents had loved you enough to leave you at a Dutch orphanage in the 19th century to join in their adventures. Great for readers of A Series of Unfortunate Events and the Serafina series. - Nathan Halter, Lahaska Bookshop There is no denying that Hana Tooke can write. There is, however, the need to question whether or not she should. Especially when she writes books that, despite their well-written words and descriptions, are harmful to the very children she is writing for.

The Unadoptables | Adoption UK Charity The Unadoptables | Adoption UK Charity

Adoption UK does not endorse the views expressed by users, for example in the 'survival strategies' or on the message boards. You alone are responsible for the content of your messages and your use of adoptionuk.org and the consequences of any such messages. By using adoptionuk.org you agree to comply with the following guidelines: I have one question... is there going to be a sequel? I love it! I really like how the book captures you in a way that a lot of books don’t. It's the sort of book that you would sneak under the covers because you don’t want to put it down.’ Ableistic, racist, and offensive. Teaching children that to be adopted you have to be white (sorry, Egg), beautiful (sorry, Sem), ‘normal’ (sorry, Lotta and Fenna), well-behaved and well-mannered (sorry, Milou)… Imagine you are a child in the system – either in foster care or up for adoption – and you read this. How would you feel? Destroyed. Hopeless. Lost. And most upsetting, unworthy. Unworthy of love or a home. This is what Hana Tooke’s debut, The Unadoptables, is teaching children. It’s teaching this to the children in the system, and its telling children out of the system that their classmates in foster care (etc.) are there because there’s something wrong, or undesirable, or unadoptable about them.How does a writer get that kind of reaction? Is it something that just happens, or does it take a lot of care and craft?

Talking to Hana Tooke about her debut novel, The Unadoptables Talking to Hana Tooke about her debut novel, The Unadoptables

With a little bit of spookiness and a whole lot of quirkiness, this book will capture your heart! - Tegan Tigani, Queen Anne Book Companyb) adoptionuk.org may not be used to send chain letters, junk mail, 'spam', solicitations or bulk communications of any kind unless the recipient has given specific permission to be included in such a list.