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.
Browse by Grade Level:
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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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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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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 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 No More
Harry Mazer
After his father is killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Adam, his mother, and sister are evacuated from Hawaii to California, where he must deal with his feelings about the war, Japanese internment camps, his father, and his own identity.
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A Brief History of Montmaray
Michelle Cooper
Sophie Fitzosborne lives in a crumbling castle in the tiny island kingdom of Montmaray with her eccentric and impoverished royal family. When she receives a journal for her sixteenth birthday, Sophie decides to chronicle day-to-day life on the island. But this is 1936, and the news that trickles in from the mainland reveals a world on the brink of war. The politics of Europe seem far away from their remote island—until two German officers land a boat on Montmaray. And then suddenly politics become very personal indeed.
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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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Absolutely, Positively Not
David LaRochelle
Steven's a 16-year-old boy with two obsessions: sex and getting his driving license. The problem is, Steven's not thinking girls when he's thinking sex. Could he be -- don't say it -- gay? Steven sets out to get in touch with his inner he-man with Healthy Heterosexual Strategies such as "Start Hanging Out with the Guys," and "Begin Intensive Dating." But are Steven's tactics going to straighten him out, or leave him all twisted up?
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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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Adoption
Laurie Willis
Collection of eleven essays pertaining to the topic of adoption, covering open adoption, transracial adoptions, challenging same-sex couples the right to adopt, and other related topics.
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Adoption and Foster Care
Kathlyn Gay
Describes how these placement systems work and reveals the feelings of young people who find homes through adoption and foster care.
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After Ever After
Jordan Sonnenblick
Although Jeff and Tad, encouraged by a new friend, Lindsey, make a deal to help one another overcome aftereffects of their cancer treatments in preparation for eighth-grade graduation, Jeff still craves advice from his older brother Stephen, who is studying drums in Africa.
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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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Alan Cole Doesn't Dance
Eric Bell
As if it were not bad enough to be bullied for being gay while trying to navigate a budding relationship, Alan's father insists he take June Harrison to a school dance.
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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.
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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 American Boys
Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
Sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing. Classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who's the older brother of his best friend.
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All the Colors of the Race
Arnold Adoff
A collection of poems written from the point of view of a child with a black mother and a white father.
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All the Stars Denied
Guadalupe Garcia McCall
When resentment surges during the Great Depression in a Texas border town, Estrella, fifteen, organizes a protest against the treatment of tejanos and soon finds herself with her mother and baby brother in Mexico.
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All We Can Do Is Wait
Richard Lawson
In the hours after a bridge collapse rocks their city, four teens are forced to face their pasts and the prospect of very different futures as they wait at Boston General Hospital for news of their loved ones.
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All We Have Left
Wendy Mills
In interweaving stories of sixteen-year-olds, modern-day Jesse tries to cope with the ramifications of her brother's death on 9/11, while in 2001, Alia, a Muslim, gets trapped in one of the Twin Towers and meets a boy who changes everything for her as flames rage around them.
