6-8 Books | University of Central Florida

This collection contains materials from the DIVerse Families bibliography organized by Grades 6-8.

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.

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One-Handed Catch

Mary Jane Auch

After losing his hand in an accident in his father's butcher shop in 1946, sixth-grader Norman uses hard work and humor to learn to live with his disability and to succeed at baseball, art, and other activities.
One Man Guy

Michael Barakiva Barakiva

Alek Khederian should have guessed something was wrong when his parents took him to a restaurant. Everyone knows that Armenians never eat out. Why bother, when their home cooking is far superior to anything these Americans could come up with? Between bouts of interrogating the waitress and criticizing the menu, Alek's parents announce that he'll be attending summer school in order to bring up his grades. Alek is sure this experience will be the perfect hellish end to his hellish freshmen year of high school. He never could've predicted that he'd meet someone like Ethan. Ethan is everything Alek wishes he were: confident, free-spirited, and irreverent. When Ethan gets Alek to cut school and go to a Rufus Wainwright concert in New York City's Central Park, Alek embarks on his first adventure outside the confines of his suburban New Jersey existence. He can't believe a guy this cool wants to be his friend. And before long, it seems like Ethan wants to be more than friends. Alek has never thought about having a boyfriend--he's barely ever had a girlfriend--but maybe it's time to think again. Michael Barakiva's One Man Guy is a romantic, moving, laugh-out-loud-funny story about what happens when one person cracks open your world and helps you see everything--and, most of all, yourself--like you never have before.
One More Step

Sheree Fitch

Fourteen-year-old Julian's parents separated when he was a baby and he is still angry and hurt. His mother has had relationships since -- all of which have ended disastrously -- but this time it seems serious. Jean-Paul looks like he might be the real thing. Julian is wary and critical as he comes to terms with the fact that he and his brother may have to let down their defenses and allow their mother to find happiness. On a road trip with his mother and her new beau, Julian finds that love and happiness come in many guises. In the end, he realizes that it is not blood that determines true family, but the willingness to stand together.
One-Third Nerd

Gennifer Choldenko

Fifth grade is not for amateurs, according to Liam. Luckily, he knows that being more than one-third nerd is not cool. Liam lives in the Bay area near San Francisco with his mom and two younger sisters. Dakota is fascinated by science and has a big personality but struggles to make friends; Izzy, a child with Down syndrome, makes friends easily and notices things that go past everyone else. Dad lives across town, but he's over a lot. And then there's Cupcake, their lovable German shepherd, who guards their basement apartment.
Open Mic: Riffs on Life Between Cultures in Ten Voices

Mitali Perkins

Let's face it: Talking about race can be difficult. It's a slippery subject, rife with as many perspectives as there are people in the world. But laughter gets us talking. It has the power to break down barriers and draw us closer together. In Open Mic, acclaimed author and speaker Mitali Perkins invites us to listen in as ten authors for young adults-some familiar, some new-step up to the mic and share their stories about what it's like growing up between cultures.
Orbiting Jupiter

Gary D. Schmidt

Jack, 12, tells the gripping story of Joseph, 14, who joins his family as a foster child. Damaged in prison, Joseph wants nothing more than to find his baby daughter, Jupiter, whom he has never seen. When Joseph has begun to believe he'll have a future, he is confronted by demons from his past that force a tragic sacrifice.
Out of My Mind

Sharon M. Draper

Melody is not like most people. She cannot walk or talk, but she has a photographic memory. She can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. She is smarter than most of the adults who try to diagnose her and smarter than her classmates in her integrated classroom, the very same classmates who dismiss her as mentally challenged, because she cannot tell them otherwise. Melody refuses to be defined by cerebral palsy, and she's determined to let everyone know it, somehow.
Out of the Blue

S. L. Rottman

After moving to Minot, North Dakota, with his mother, the new female base commander, Air Force dependent Stu Ballentyne gradually becomes aware that something terrible is going on in his neighbor's house.
Over the River

Sharelle Byars Moranville

In 1947, after the war, Willa Mae's father returns to the Illinois town where she has lived with her maternal grandparents for the last five of her eleven years, and Willa Mae finds herself struggling to understand old family tensions and secrets.
Owning It: Stories About Teens with Disabilities

Donald R. Gallo

Presents ten stories of teenagers facing all of the usual challenges of school, parents, boyfriends and girlfriends, plus the additional complications that come with having a physical or psychological disability.
Paper Wishes

Lois Sepahban

Ten-year-old Manami did not realize how peaceful her family's life on Bainbridge Island was until the day it all changed. It's 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Manami and her family are Japanese American, which means that the government says they must leave their home by the sea and join other Japanese Americans at a prison camp in the desert. Manami is sad to go, but even worse is that they are going to have to give her and her grandfather's dog, Yujiin, to a neighbor to take care of. Manami decides to sneak Yujiin under her coat and gets as far as the mainland before she is caught and forced to abandon Yujiin. She and her grandfather are devastated, but Manami clings to the hope that somehow Yujiin will find his way to the camp and make her family whole again. It isn't until she finds a way to let go of her guilt that Manami can reclaim the piece of herself that she left behind and accept all that has happened to her family.
Pashmina

Nidhi Chanani

Priyanka Das has so many unanswered questions: Why did her mother abandon her home in India years ago? What was it like there? And most importantly, who is her father, and why did her mom leave him behind? But Pri's mom avoids these questions and the topic of India is permanently closed. For Pri, her mother's homeland can only exist in her imagination. That is, until she find a mysterious pashmina tucked away in a forgotten suitcase. When she wraps herself in it, she is transported to a place more vivid and colorful than any guidebook or Bollywood film.
Peace, Locomotion

Jacqueline Woodson

Through letters to his little sister, who is living in a different foster home, sixth-grader Lonnie, also known as "Locomotion," keeps a record of their lives while they are apart, describing his own foster family, including his foster brother who returns home after losing a leg in the Iraq War.
Peas and Carrots

Tanita S. Davis

After her mother is arrested, fifteen-year-old Dess is sent to live with the foster family that took in her baby brother several years before, and although she and her new foster sister, Hope, clash immediately, they soon realize they have much in common.
People Like Us

Dana Mele

When a girl is found dead at her elite boarding school, soccer-star Kay Donovan follows a scavenger hunt which implicates suspects increasingly close to her, unraveling her group of popular friends and perfectly constructed life.
People with Disabilities

Hayley Mitchell Haugen

This volume provides an overview of people with disabilities in the United States, a chronology of important events, an annotated bibliography, and other resources for conducting further research. The author illuminates this often-neglected human side of these problems by presenting a collection of personal narratives of people who have had personal experience with physical and mental disabilities as participants, witnesses, or involved professionals.
Pieces of Why

K.L. Going

Tia lives with her mom in a high-risk neighborhood in New Orleans and loves singing gospel in the Rainbow Choir with Keisha, her boisterous and assertive best friend. Tia's dream is to change the world with her voice; and by all accounts, she might be talented enough. But when a shooting happens in her neighborhood and she learns the truth about the crime that sent her father to prison years ago, Tia finds she can't sing anymore.
Pink Chameleon

Fiona Dunbar

Rorie and Elsie live happily with their slightly eccentric parents, until one day their parents disappear. Rorie and Elsie are put in the guardianship of their sour uncle and aunt in their boarding school. When they can take no more the girls run away in search of their parents and discover that their adventure has only just begun.
Playground: The Mostly True Story of a Former Bully

Curtis 50 Cent Jackson and Laura Moser

After beating up Maurice on the playground, Butterball is forced to see the school therapist.
Playing Without the Ball

Rich Wallace

Feeling abandoned by his parents, who have gone their separate ways and left him behind in a small Pennsylvania town, seventeen-year-old Jay finds hope for the future in a church-sponsored basketball team and a female friend.
Postcards to Father Abraham

Catherine Lewis

When sixteen-year-old Meghan loses her leg to cancer and her brother to Vietnam, she expresses intense anger in postcards which she writes to her idol, Abraham Lincoln.
Prince: Singer-Songwriter, Musician, and Record Producer

David Robson

Readers learn about the life and achievements of singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer, Prince. Includes photos, chronology, accomplishments and awards, glossary, further resources, and index.
Princess Knight, Part 1

Osamu Tezuka

Set in a medieval fairy-tale backdrop, Princess Knight is the tale of a young princess named Sapphire who must pretend to be a male prince so she can inherit the throne. Women have long been prevented from taking the throne, but Sapphire is not discouraged and instead she fully accepts the role, becoming a dashing hero(ine) that the populous is proud of.
Princess Knight, Part 2

Osamu Tezuka

A young princess must pretend to be a boy so she can inherit her father's throne. At night she fights crime, disguised as the Phantom Knight. Always she must avoid the efforts of an evil duke who would unmask her.
Princess Princess Ever After

Katie O’Neill

When the heroic princess Amira rescues the kind-hearted princess Sadie from her tower prison, the two band together to defeat a jealous sorceress with a dire grudge against Sadie.