This collection contains materials from the DIVerse Families bibliography organized by Realism genre.
DIVerse Families is a comprehensive bibliography that demonstrates the growing diversity of families in the United States. This type of bibliography provides teachers, librarians, counselors, adoption agencies, children/young adults, and especially parents and grandparents needing to empower their children with materials that reflect their families.
Browse by Genre:
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10,000 Dresses
Marcus Ewer
Bailey longs to wear the beautiful dresses of her dreams but is ridiculed by her unsympathetic family which rejects her true perception of herself.
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15 Things NOT to do with a Baby
Margaret McAllister
A girl learns what not to do with her new brother, including sending him to play with an elephant or hanging him from the clothesline, and also what to do.
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42 Miles
Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
As her thirteenth birthday approaches, JoEllen decides to bring together her two separate lives--one as Joey, who enjoys weekends with her father and other relatives on a farm, and another as Ellen, who lives with her mother in a Cincinnati apartment near her school and friends.
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Abby
Jeannette Franklin Caines
An adopted African American preschooler enjoys hearing about the day she became part of her warm, loving family.
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Abby Spencer Goes To Bollywood
Varsha Bajaj
What thirteen year old Abby wants most is to meet her father. She just never imagined he would be a huge film star, in Bollywood! Now she's traveling to Mumbai to get to know her famous father. Abby is overwhelmed by the culture clash, the pressures of being the daughter of India's most famous celebrity, and the burden of keeping her identity a secret. But as she learns to navigate her new surroundings, she just might discover where she really belongs.
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A Boy Like Me
Jennie Wood
Born a girl, Peyton Honeycutt meets Tara Parks in the eighth grade bathroom shortly after he gets his first period. It is the best and worst day of his life. Determined to impress Tara, Peyton sets out to win her love by mastering the drums and basketball. He takes on Tara's small-minded mother, the bully at school, and the prejudices within his conservative hometown. In the end, Peyton must accept and stand up for who he is or lose the woman he loves.
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A Boy's Best Friend
Joan Alden
Seven-year-old Will, an asthma sufferer and a target for bullies, finally gets the birthday wish of his dreams.
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Absolutely Almost
Lisa Graff
Ten-year-old Albie has never been the smartest, tallest, best at gym, greatest artist, or most musical in his class, as his parents keep reminding him, but new nanny Calista helps him uncover his strengths and take pride in himself.
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A Child's Calendar
John Updike
A collection of twelve poems describing the activities in a child's life and the changes in the weather as the year moves from January to December.
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A Clear Spring
Barbara Sjoholm
While visiting relatives in Seattle, twelve-year-old Willa explores the ethnic diversity of her family and investigates the pollution of a salmon stream.
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A Different Home: A New Foster Child's Story
John DeGarmo and Kelly DeGarmo
When Jessie is placed in foster care, she finds it difficult at first but slowly begins to like her new home. First person recount. Story is designed to help children aged 4-10 to settle into care. Includes notes for foster parents.
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Adoption is for Always
Linda Walvoord and Judith Friedman
Although Celia reacts to having been adopted with anger and insecurity, her parents help her accept her feelings and celebrate their love for her by making her adoption day a family holiday. Includes factual information about the adoption process.
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A + E 4ever
Ilike Merey
Asher Machnik is a teenage boy cursed with a beautiful androgynous face. Guys punch him, girls slag him and by high school he's developed an intense fear of being touched. Art remains his only escape. Eulalie Mason is the lonely, tough-talking dyke from school who befriends Ash, a fellow artist and a best friend...a + e 4EVER is a graphic novel set in that ambiguous crossroads where love and friendship, boy and girl, straight and gay meet. It goes where few books have ventured, into gender/queer life, where affections aren't black and white.
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A Family for Jamie: An Adoption Story
Suzanne Bloom
Although Dan and Molly can make cookies and birdhouses, they cannot make a baby, so they adopt Jamie and share with him their life and love.
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A Family is a Family is a Family
Sara O'Leary
When a teacher asks the children in her class to think about what makes their families special, the answers are all different in many ways -- but the same in the one way that matters most of all. One child is worried that her family is just too different to explain, but listens as her classmates talk about what makes their families special. One is raised by a grandmother, and another has two dads. One is full of stepsiblings, and another has a new baby.
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A Fire Engine for Ruthie
Leslea Newman
Ruthie's Nana suggests playing tea party and fashion show during their visit, but Ruthie is much more interested in the vehicles that a neighbor boy is playing with as they pass his house each day.
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A Forever Family
Roslyn Banish and Jennifer Jordan-Wong
Eight-year-old Jennifer Jordan-Wong describes her adoption by a family after four years of living as a foster child with many different families.
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After Tupac & D Foster
Jacqueline Woodson
In the New York City borough of Queens in 1996, three girls bond over their shared love of Tupac Shakur's music, as together they try to make sense of the unpredictable world in which they live.
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A Handful of Stars
Cynthia Lord
When her blind dog slips his collar, twelve-year old Lily meets Salma Santiago, a young Hispanic girl whose migrant family are in Maine for the blueberry-picking season, and, based partly on their mutual love of dogs, the two forge a friendship while painting bee boxes for Lily's grandfather--but as the Blueberry Queen pageant approaches Lily and Selma are confronted with some of the hard truths of prejudice and migrant life.
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A Koala for Katie: An Adoption Story
Jonathan London
On a trip to the zoo, Katie gets a special present that helps her realize how much her adoptive parents love her.
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Alex As Well
Alyssa Brugman
Alex has turned vegetarian, changed schools, stopped taking her medications, and created a new identity. An identity that shakes her world. And Alex - the other Alex - has a lot to say about it.
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Alex as Well
Alyssa Brugman
What do you do when everybody says you're someone you're not? Alex wants change. Massive change. More radical than you could imagine. Her mother is not happy, in fact she's imploding. Her dad walked out. Alex has turned vegetarian, ditched one school, enrolled in another, thrown out her clothes. And created a new identity. An identity that changes her world. And Alex-the other Alex-has a lot to say about it. Alex As Well is a confronting and heartfelt story of adolescent experience of questioning identity, discovering sexuality, navigating friendships and finding a place to belong. Alex is a strong, vulnerable, confident, shy and determined character, one you will never forget.
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A List of Cages
Robin Roe
When Adam Blake lands the best elective ever in his senior year, serving as an aide to the school psychologist, he thinks he's got it made. Sure, it means a lot of sitting around, which isn't easy for a guy with ADHD, but he can't complain, since he gets to spend the period texting all his friends. Then the doctor asks him to track down the troubled freshman who keeps dodging her, and Adam discovers that the boy is Julian; the foster brother he hasn't seen in five years.
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A Little Friendly Advice
Siobhan Vivian
Ruby is on the verge of turning sixteen. Her friends have been planning her party for weeks. They all have gathered at her house for a pre-party. Her mom has made her favorite dinner - ziti. All is perfect, down to the vintage Polaroid camera her mother has given her. Then it turns horribly wrong. With the ring of the doorbell, her father, who has been gone for years, has come back into her life.
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All About Adoption: How Families are Made & How Kids Feel About It
Marc. A. Nemiroff and Jane Annunziata
Using simple language, describes the stages of the adoption process and discusses complex feelings commonly felt by adopted children.