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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A Silent Voice, Volume 3
Yoshitoki Oima
Shoya’s decided to do everything he can to make up for how terribly he treated Shoko, his former classmate who can’t hear. But more than the challenge of learning to communicate, it means facing a past he thought he’d left behind forever. Now a reunion with old friends will transform Shoya, and his relationship with Shoko.
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A Silent Voice, Volume 4
Yoshitoki Oima
Once upon a time, Shoya was terribly cruel to Shoko, his elementary school classmate who couldn’t hear. To make up for his past sins, Shoya has devoted himself to repaying the debt of happiness he owes. So when Shoko faces a romantic setback, Shoya assembles some familiar faces from their past for a trip to the amusement park that may just change things for Shoya, too.
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A Silent Voice, Volume 5
Yoshitoki Oima
Despite their tense pasts, Shoya begins to embrace the friend group that used to terrorize Shoko because she couldn’t hear. Now that summer vacation is in full swing, the crew can work together to film Tomohiro’s eccentric movie. Each fun-filled day lazily passes by, but doubt tugs at Shoya’s heavy heart and he is desperate to cling on to meaningful moments before they are gone.
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A Silent Voice, Volume 6
Yoshitoki Oima
Time stands still for both Shoya and Shoko. Triggered by past traumas, Shoya coldly attacked his friends and burnt the bridges he first set out to rebuild. Shoko feels a deep responsibility for this disaster and attempts to pay for it by taking her own life. Meanwhile, each of their friends finally show their true colors. After everything has fallen apart, how will they mend their hearts and put the pieces back together?
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A Silent Voice, Volume 7
Yoshitoki Oima
Shoya’s life hangs on by a thread after he jumped just in time to save Shoko. Despite the despair, Shoko is determined to move forward and get back what she thinks she has ruined… But broken friendships can heal, too. Quietly, but surely, the disbanded crew finds their spirit — the show must go on! As the movie-making reconvenes, the kids begin to transform the world that had once been so cruel to them. What could the future hold for everyone?
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A Sister for Matthew: A Story About Adoption
Pamela Kennedy
When Matthew's parents decide to adopt a baby girl from China he has many questions, but by the time she arrives, he is excited about his new sister.
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Ask the Passengers
A. S. King
Astrid Jones copes with her small town's gossip and narrow-mindedness by staring at the sky and imagining that she's sending love to the passengers in the airplanes flying high over her backyard. Maybe they'll know what to do with it. Maybe it'll make them happy. Maybe they'll need it. Her mother doesn't want it, her father's always stoned, her perfect sister's too busy trying to fit in, and the people in her small town would never allow her to love the person she really wants to: another girl named Dee.
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A Solitary Blue
Cynthia Voigt
Jeff's mother, who deserted the family years before, reenters his life and widens the gap between Jeff and his father, a gap that only truth, love, and friendship can heal.
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A Step Toward Falling
Cammie McGovern
When their inaction during an attack on a disabled girl earns them community service at a center for people with disabilities, Emily and Lucas bond while trying to make up for their mistake, and wonder if they can make it right with the girl who suffered because of them.
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As the Crow Flies
Melanie Gillman
Charlie Lamonte is thirteen years old, queer, black, and questioning what was once a firm belief in God. So, she's spending a week of her summer vacation at an all-white Christian backpacking camp. And she can't help but poke holes in the pious obliviousness of this storied sanctuary with little regard for people like herself...or her fellow camper, Sydney.
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A Tale of Two Daddies
Vanita Oelschlager
A young girl describes how her two daddies help her through her day, including her poppa cooking eggs and toast, her daddy fixing her knee when she is hurt, and both fathers being there for her when she needs love.
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A Tale of Two Mommies
Vanita Oelschlager
A young boy describes to two other children how his two mommies help him with all his needs.
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A Thirst for Home
Christine Leronimo
Alemitu lives with her mother in a poor village in Ethiopia, where she must walk miles for water and hunger roars in her belly. Even though life is difficult, she dreams of someday knowing more about the world. When her mother has no choice but to leave her at an orphanage to give her a chance at a better life, an American family adopts Alemitu.
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A Time to Dance
Padma Venkatraman
In India, a girl who excels at Bharatanatyam dance refuses to give up after losing a leg in an accident.
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At My House What Makes a Family is Love
Dee Dee Walter
What makes a family? A single mom? Two Dads? This book talks about all the different families. Families are ever changing in today's society. This shows that all families should be embraced and celebrated. Families are what makes them and the ultimate connecting factor is love.
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A Trick of the Light
Lois Metzger
Fifteen-year-old Mike desperately attempts to take control as his parents separate and his life falls apart.
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At the Bottom of the World (Jack and the Geniuses Series #1)
Bill Nye and Gregory Mone
Traveling to Antarctica for a prestigious science competition, twelve-year-old Jack and his genius foster siblings, Ava and Matt, become caught up in a mystery involving a missing scientist.
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Aunt Pearl
Monica Kulling
Aunt Pearl arrives one day pushing a shopping cart full of her worldly goods. Her sister Rose has invited her to come live with her family. Six-year-old Marta is happy to meet her aunt, who takes her out to look for treasure on garbage day, and who shows her camp group how to decorate a coffee table with bottle caps. But almost immediately, Pearl and Rose start to clash ― over Pearl’s belongings crammed into the house, and over Rose’s household rules. As the weeks pass, Pearl grows quieter and more withdrawn, until, one morning, she is gone. Acclaimed author Monica Kulling brings sensitivity to this story about homelessness, family and love, beautifully illustrated in Irene Luxbacher’s rich collage style.
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Autoboyography
Christina Lauren
High school senior Tanner Scott has hidden his bisexuality since his family moved to Utah, but he falls hard for Sebastian, a Mormon mentoring students in a writing seminar Tanner's best friend convinced him to take.
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A Very Important Day
Maggie Rugg Herold
Two-hundred nineteen people from thirty-two different countries make their way to downtown New York in a snowstorm to be sworn in as citizens of the United States.
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A Very Special Critter
Gina Mayer and Mercer Mayer
In this wise and funny picture-book adventure, a special student joins Little Critter's class at school. The new student uses a wheelchair, and Little Critter is worried. Will his classmate be very different? Will the class know how to act around him? It's an honest, realistic look at ways kids deal successfully with the unknown -- mixed with a big dollop of Mercer Mayer humor for good measure.
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A Very, Very Bad Thing
Jeffrey Self
Marley is comfortable with being gay in Winston-Salem, but he never had any real passions until he met Christopher, son of a bigoted television evangelist; the two become an inseparable couple until Christopher's parents send him to a religious program intended to "cure" him of being gay, and outraged Marley tells a very big lie--and then has to deal with the repercussions.
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A Vigil for Joe Rose: Stories of Being Out in High School
Michael Whatling
A Vigil for Joe Rose is a collection of stories told with empathy and humour about the experience of being out in high school. As a unified collection, these eight short stories and a novella chart the journey of the main characters from first coming out to their growth into confident young gay men, and the challenges, triumphs, and losses along the way.
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A Visit to the Big House
Oliver Butterworth
When Willy, Rose, and their mother go to visit Daddy in prison, they are quite anxious. But once Daddy appears and they can talk and ask questions.
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Away
Emil Sher
A gentle tale told entirely through sticky notes between a mother and daughter as the girl's departure for her first summer camp draws near demonstrates how love can be found even in scribbled messages and other unlikely places.