Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections Book

Well, it took over a month, but I read this all cover to cover. I don't like to rate and review books without reading them in their entirety, and in this case I especially felt that I should since several of the other reviewers said they hadn't read it all. So I got a solid sense of the ups and downs of this adoption "toolbox." Here's my summary.

The Good:
-It's quite comprehensive. Even though it's focused primarily on children adopted internationally and (often) transracially, I was able to glean ideas for my own same-race, domestically adopted-from-birth son in areas like school projects and life narratives. (The book inspired me to research and then create and purchase a custom picture book telling his adoption story.) It tackles everything from race to PTSD to traveling back to the home country.
-There are a lot of helpful lists throughout the book that make this a good reference guide (and one reason I'm considering keeping it, despite its many issues enumerated below).
-If the (10-year-old) information in the book is accurate, many professionals, whether in health care or education, are simply not familiar with the multitude of possible issues related to institutionalization and overseas adoption. If I were going to adopt internationally, I would find some of the tips, such as about getting the child evaluated in their birth language immediately after adoption, to be critical. Based on the many stories in here from parents who were told "wait and see" by well-meaning professionals, you need to do your own research and not rely on others to catch issues (language, sensory, psychological, etc.) when they may have zero experience with this specific population.
-Although many of the stories come from the book's two editors, they include stories from a wide variety of adoptive parents and adult adoptees (only one or two birth parents), as well as from professionals who work with international adoptees.

The Neutral:
-It's written for parents of internationally adopted children, something that is not really clear until you start reading it. Although some of the topics are applicable to all adopted children, and many (race, past trauma, etc.) could be applicable to children adopted from foster care, many of the contributors make the assumption that the reader is adopting or has adopted a child internationally and write accordingly.
-It was published in 2006 (at least my copy), so some of the information is outdated by now.

The Bad:
-The editing is pretty bad, and it gets a lot worse near the end, as if they'd given up on rereading at that point. The editors and several of the contributors run the press through which the book was published, so they don't seem to have had the needed external oversight to make sure the book was well edited (nor the editing expertise to do it themselves).
-Related to that, the formatting is all over the place. Some pieces have a byline at the top, some have a bio at the end, some have both. The inclusions of the mini-bios is sometimes helpful and sometimes nonsensical, like when they simply repeat the information that was in the piece itself or when they provide information on one of the primary editors for the umpteenth time. There were other minor formatting glitches throughout, but the inconsistent attribution format drove me nuts the most.
-Even though there are a handful of male contributors, the book is written almost exclusively to women/mothers. It's assumed that the child needs to attach with the mother specifically, that the mother will be the one advocating for the child in school, and so on. Even though there is a section on same-sex parenting, the rest of the book assumes either a single female parent or a male parent and a female parent, with the female parent doing most of the work. If you are an adoptive father reading this book, you're likely to feel very left out of the discussion.
-Based on something mentioned briefly in the book, it appears to have grown out of an online community of adoptive parents who wanted to collate their personal experiences and wisdom to share with one another and others. And it absolutely reads that way. Very few sources are cited, and there's a lot of relying on the same handful of "experts" who may or may not present anything other than their own experience to back them up. Rigorously tested therapies and wholly debunked theories are all thrown together as suggested options for helping kids. Do your own research before you dive into any of the techniques, therapies, or products promoted by this book.

I think maybe the best way to view this book is if you asked 100 different adoptive parents and a dozen or so adoptees to write essays on their personal adoption experiences, and then you threw them all in a binder together roughly organized by topic. What you'd expect to get would be a massively comprehensive resource covering a wide range of topics, but with an equally large range of quality and a near-total lack of editorial oversight. That's what this book feels like. For what it is, it's useful, and I learned a lot from it. I just wish it had been put through some rigorous editorial scrutiny by someone not directly involved in its writing or publication.