The Diverse Families bookshelf was created and funded through numerous grants. Due to lack of additional grants and the loss of key personnel, the project has come to an end. We have tremendously enjoyed creating this database and hope that it can help bring readers and books together.
This collection contains materials from the DIVerse Families bibliography organized by 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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How It Feels to Float
Helen Fox
A gutting, profound, deeply hopeful portrayal of living with mental illness and grief, this modern-day Bell Jar marks the arrival of an exceptional new talent in the YA space. Biz knows how to float. She has her people, her posse, her mom and the twins. She has Grace. And she has her dad, who tells her about the little kid she was, who loves her so hard, and who shouldn't be here but is. So Biz doesn't tell anyone anything. Not about her dark, runaway thoughts, not about kissing Grace or noticing Jasper, the new boy. And she doesn't tell anyone about her dad. Because her dad died when she was six. And Biz knows how to float, right there on the surface--normal okay regular fine. But after what happens on the beach--first in the ocean, and then in the sand--the tethers that hold Biz steady come undone. Dad disappears, and with him, all comfort. It might be easier, better, sweeter to float all the way away? Or maybe stay a little longer, find her father, bring him back to her. Or maybe--maybe maybe maybe--there's a third way Biz just can't see yet. In this mesmerizing, radiant debut, Helena Fox tells a story about love and grief and family and friendship, about inter-generational mental illness, and how living with it is both a bridge to someone loved and lost and also a chasm. She explores the hard, bewildering, and beautiful places loss can take us, and honors those who hold us tightly when the current wants to tug us out to sea.
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How I Was Adopted: Samantha's Story
Joanna Cole
A young girl tells the story of how she came to be her parents' child through adoption.
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How My Family Came to Be: Daddy, Papa and Me
Andrew Aldrich
Examines how to be a family when adopted by a gay couple.
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How My Parents Learned to Eat
Ina R. Friedman
An American sailor courts a Japanese girl and each tries, in secret, to learn the other's way of eating.
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How (Not) to Ask a Boy to Prom
S.J. Goslee
When his older sister encourages him to ask someone to the prom, things do not go as planned and Nolan ends up fake dating a guy who used to bully him.
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How Tia Lola Learned to Teach
Julia Alvarez
Juanita and Miguel's great aunt, Tia Lola, comes from the Dominican Republic to help take care of them after their parents divorce, and soon she is so involved in their small Vermont community that when her visa expires, the whole town turns out to support her.
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How to Keep Rolling After a Fall
Karole Cozzo
Mean girl Nikki Baylor, accused of a cyberbullying incident that nearly resulted in a classmate's suicide, is expelled from school, abandoned by her friends, and distrusted by her parents but she gets a second chance after meeting Pax, a spirited wheelchair rugby player.
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How to Save a Life
Sara Zarr
Told from their own viewpoints, seventeen-year-old Jill, in grief over the loss of her father, and Mandy, nearly nineteen, are thrown together when Jill's mother agrees to adopt Mandy's unborn child but nothing turns out as they had anticipated.
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How to Survive a Summer
Nick White
A debut novel centering around a gay conversion camp in Mississippi and a man's reckoning with the trauma he faced there as a teen.
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How Would You Feel If Your Dad Was Gay?
Ann Heron
Jasmine thinks she's lucky to have three dads--a stepfather, her natural father, and his lover. However, her schoolmates and even teachers find this hard to accept. Jasmine's brother is subjected to name-calling and almost ends up in a fight over his father's lifestyle. At home, the two dads are supportive and understanding, and the children's natural father contacts the principal about it. A special assembly is the result, with a children's counselor discussing different kinds of families. A subplot, featuring a lesbian and her son, speaks nonjudgmentally to the issue of the sexual preferences among the offspring of homosexual parents. This book with a purpose does a good job of raising the issues sensitively and answering the questions reasonably. Scratchy ink drawings depict an African-American family living in an average neighborhood, with the children attending a racially balanced school.
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Hudson Hates School
Ella Hudson
Hudson, who loves to make things but hates going to school, fails a spelling test and meets with a special teacher, who discovers Hudson has a very different way of learning things.
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Hurricane Child
Kheryn Callender
Born on Water Island in the Virgin Islands during a hurricane, which is considered bad luck, twelve-year-old Caroline falls in love with another girl--and together they set out in a hurricane to find Caroline's missing mother.
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Hurricane Heat
Steve Barwin
Years after Travis's parents die in a car crash and he and his younger sister, Amanda, are separated, Travis sets out to search for her at the risk of losing an opportunity for a future baseball career.
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Hurt Go Happy
Ginny Rorby
When thirteen-year-old Joey Willis, deaf since the age of six, meets Dr. Charles Mansell and his chimpanzee Sukari, who use sign language, her world blooms with possibilities but that of the chimp begins to narrow.
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Hush Puppy
Lisa Cresswell
Intelligent Corrine, abandoned by her mother, and artsy Jamie, forced to play football by a redneck father, both dream of leaving their podunk town and never looking back. Their shared love of literature and a dream of a better life bring them together and a romance blossoms between them in a secret place of their own in the steamy North Carolina woods. When Jamie is involved in the accidental death of a white girl, he's terrified of his abusive father. Corrine takes the blame to protect Jaime, with dire consequences for herself and her dreams of the future. Her life in danger, Corrine's left wondering if Jamie ever cared about her at all.
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I Am a Ballerina
Valerie Coulman
The endearing story of young Molly's dream to fly through the air like a real dancer, from her first shaky lessons to her dazzling Christmas recital.
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I Am a Bear
Jean-Francois Dumont
A homeless bear living in a city has a hard time getting by, but when a little girl makes friends with him, his life becomes brighter.
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I am Flippish!
Leslie V. Ryan
Sean's mom usually helps out at school, but not today. Today it's dad's turn! But when his classmates start asking some awkward questions, Sean wonders why he's so different. Together, and with the help of their teacher, the students learn a few things about diversity and Sean teaches his friends just how wonderful it is to be different.
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I am Hapa!
Crystal Smith
Hapa, a term that originates in Hawaii, is used to describe a person of partial Asian or Pacific Islander descent. Today, the multiracial population in the United States is growing faster than at any other time in history. As many as 17 million Americans identify themselves as of more than one race. Many children are confronted with their identities, especially when questioned about being different . With delightful photographs, I am Hapa encourages children to look within themselves and appreciate the diverse cultures and ethnicities that make each person special.
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I am J
Cris Beam
J, who feels like a boy mistakenly born as a girl, runs away from his best friend who has rejected him and the parents he thinks do not understand him when he finally decides that it is time to be who he really is.
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I Am Living in 2 Homes (I Am Book)
Garcelle Beauvais and Sebastian A. Jones
Twins Jay and Nia are children of two worlds and two homes. Readers can follow the siblings as they both address the difficulties of having parents who are no longer together and discover the benefits of having two very different homes to explore and enjoy.
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I Am Mixed (I Am Book)
Garcelle Beauvais and Sebastian A. Jones
Jay and Nia are the children of two worlds, and as they'll discover, they can enjoy the best of both. From Mommy's jazz beats to Daddy's classical piano, we will dance with the twins through a book that explores what it is to be of mixed ancestry, proving that a child is more than the sum of their parents.
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I Am Not a Number
Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer
A picture book based on a true story about a young First Nations girl who was sent to a residential school. When eight-year-old Irene is removed from her First Nations family to live in a residential school she is confused, frightened, and terribly homesick. She tries to remember who she is and where she came from despite the efforts of the nuns to force her to do otherwise. Based on the life of Jenny Kay Dupuis.
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I Am Nuchu
Brenda Stanley
Upon his parents' 1981 divorce, Cal Burton goes from being a popular, comfortable Spokane basketball all-star to a resident of a Ute Indian reservation in Utah, where apathy, poor living conditions, racism, and bitterness over a decades-old family tragedy change his life.
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I Am Special: I Have Two Dads
Rachel S. Huey
"I Am Special" shows your child how special they are to have two dads.