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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1001 Cranes
Naomi Hirahara
With her parents on the verge of separating, a devastated twelve-year-old Japanese American girl spends the summer in Los Angeles with her grandparents, where she folds paper cranes into wedding displays, becomes involved with a young skateboarder, and learns how complicated relationships can be.
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123 A Family Counting Book
Bobbie Combs
Introduces the numbers one through twenty against a background of impressionistic oil paintings portraying gay and lesbian parents and racial diversity.
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13
Jason Robert Brown and Dan Elish
Almost thirteen-year-old Evan Goldman learns what it means to be a man when his parents separate and he and his mother move from New York City to Appleton, Indiana, right before his bar mitzvah.
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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 Father Like That
Charlotte Zolotow
A young boy shares with his mother his daydreams about the father who left before he was born.
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A Fire Engine for Ruthie
Lesléa 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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Alan Cole is Not a Coward
Eric Bell
Hoping to keep his older brother Nathan silent about his secret crush on another boy at their school, twelve-year-old Alan agrees to a ruthless sibling competition involving nearly impossible tasks--from standing up to their demanding father to getting a first kiss.