This collection contains materials from the DIVerse Families bibliography organized Grades 9-12.
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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Multiethnic Teens and Cultural Identity
Barbara Cruz
Discusses the many issues facing teens of multiethnic descent, including discrimination and the search for ethnic identity in an unsympathetic culture.
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My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life
Rachel Cohn
On her sixteenth birthday, Elle Zoellner leaves the foster care system to live with the father she never knew in Tokyo, Japan.
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My Best Friend, Maybe
Caela Carter
Colette's life is near-perfect, if boring, so when her ex-best friend, Sadie, asks her to come on vacation to the Greek Islands for a family wedding, Colette agrees but is surprised to learn Sadie's true reason for the invitation.
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My Brother’s Husband, Vol. 2
Gengoroh Tagame
As Mike continues his journey of discovery concerning Ryoji's past, Yaichi gradually comes to understand that being gay is just another way of being human. And that, in many ways, remains a radical concept in Japan even today. In the meantime, the bond between Mike and young Kana grows ever stronger, and yet he is going to have to return to Canada soon--a fact that fills them both with impending heartbreak.
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My Brother's Husband, Volume 1
Gengoroh Tagame
Yaichi is a work-at-home suburban dad in contemporary Tokyo; formerly married to Natsuki, father to their young daughter, Kana. Their lives suddenly change with the arrival at their doorstep of a hulking, affable Canadian named Mike Flanagan, who declares himself the widower of Yaichi's estranged gay twin, Ryoji. Mike is on a quest to explore Ryoji's past, and the family reluctantly but dutifully takes him in. What follows is an unprecedented and heartbreaking look at the state of a largely still-closeted Japanese gay culture: how it's been affected by the West, and how the next generation can change the preconceptions about it and prejudices against it.
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My Father's Son
Terri Fields
Kevin's life of high school classes, crushes, basketball, and shuttling between his parents' homes falls apart when his father is arrested as a suspected serial killer, leading Kevin to a new understanding of his family and himself.
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My Most Excellent Year
Steve Kluger
Three teenagers in Boston narrate their experiences of a year of new friendships, first loves, and coming into their own.
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My New Gender Workbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving World Peace Through Gender Anarchy and Sex Positivity
Kate Bornstein
In My Gender Workbook, transgender activist Kate Bornstein brings theory down to Earth and provides a practical approach to living with or without a gender. Bornstein starts from the premise that there are not just two genders performed in today's world, but countless genders lumped under the two-gender framework. Using a unique, deceptively simple and always entertaining workbook format, complete with quizzes, exercises, and puzzles, Bornstein gently but firmly guides readers toward discovering their own unique gender identity. Since its first publication in 1997, My Gender Workbook has been challenging, encouraging, questionning, and handholding those trying to figure out how to become a "real man," a "real woman," or "something else entirely." In this updated edition of her classic text, Bornstein re-examines gender in light of issues like race and class. With new quizzes, new puzzles, new exercises, and plenty of Kate's over-the-top style, My Gender Workbook, 2e promises to help a new generation create their own unique place on the gender spectrum.
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My Tiki Girl
Jennifer McMahon
Fifteen-year-old Maggie, still grieving the loss of her mother in an accident that also gave her a limp, has turned her back on old friends but connects with a new student, Dahlia, who makes her part of her quirky family and plans their future together as roving musicians and lovers.
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My Time as Caz Hazard
Tanya Lloyd Kyi
Caz thinks she has a pretty good reason when she punches her boyfriend in the face, but she gets expelled anyway. Moving to a new school, she is told she is dyslexic and sent to special education classes. Caz tries to fit in and get by while suffering the taunts and abuse that others throw at the students in her class. Her friendship with Amanda leads her into new territory--shoplifting and skipping school. Coupled with her parents' impending separation, her life is spiraling out of control.
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My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family
Zach Wahls
An advocate and son of same-gender parents recounts his famed address to the Iowa House of Representatives on civil unions, and describes his positive experiences of growing up in an alternative family in spite of prejudice.
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My Two Uncles
Judith Vigna
Plans for Elly's grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary party are upset when Grampy refuses to invite Elly's Uncle Phil and his friend, Ned, who are gay.
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Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List
Rachel Cohn
Although they have been friends and neighbors all their lives, straight Naomi and gay Ely find their relationship severely strained during their freshman year at New York University.
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Nate Expectations (Better Nate Than Ever #3)
Tim Federle
Desperate to turn his life from flop to fabulous, Nate takes on a huge freshman English project with his BFF, Libby: he's going to make a musical out of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. But when Nate's New York crush ghosts him, and his grades start to slip, he finds the only thing harder than being on Broadway is being a freshman.
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New Boy
Julian Houston
Fifteen-year-old Rob Garrett wants nothing more than to escape the segregated South and prove himself. But in late 1950s Virginia, opportunity doesn’t come easily to an African American. So Rob’s parents take the unusual step of enrolling their son in a Connecticut boarding school, where he will have the best education available. He will also be the first student of color in the school’s history. No matter—Rob Garrett is on his way. But times are changing. While Rob is experiencing the privilege and isolation of private school, a movement is rising back home. Men and women are organizing, demanding an end to segregation, and in Rob’s hometown, his friends are on the verge of taking action. There is even talk about sitting in at a lunch counter that refuses to serve black people. How can Rob hope to make a difference when he’s a world away?
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Nico and Tucker
Rachel Gold
The decision can't be put off any longer. A medical crisis turns Nico's body into a battleground, crushing Nico under conflicting family pressures. Having lived genderqueer for years, Nico is used to getting strong reactions (and uninvited opinions!) from everyone, but it is Tucker's reaction that hurts the most. Jess Tucker didn't mean to hurt Nico, but she panicked. And after the worst year of her life, she's hanging on by a thread. Forget recovery time and therapy, she needs to put the past behind her and be normal again. But when her relationship with Nico becomes more than she can handle, she cuts and runs.
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Night Hoops
Carl Deuker
While trying to prove that he is good enough to be on his high school's varsity basketball team, Nick must also deal with his parents' divorce and the erratic behavior of a troubled classmate who lives across the street.
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Night Music
Jenn Marie Thorne
Ruby and Oscar are caught up in a romance despite very different backgrounds and her having given up on music, while he is the protégé of her father, a renowned composer.
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Nimona
Noelle Stevenson
Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes everyone thinks they are. But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona's powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.
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None of the Above
I.W. Gregorio
A groundbreaking story about a teenage girl who discovers she's intersex...and what happens when her secret is revealed to the entire school. Incredibly compelling and sensitively told, None of the Above is a thought-provoking novel that explores what it means to be a boy, a girl, or something in between.
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No Place
Todd Strasser
Rendered homeless by circumstances beyond his family's control, Dan is forced to move to Tent City, where he begins fighting for better conditions only to be targeted by an adversary who wants to destroy the impoverished region.
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Nora & Kettle (Paper Starts #1)
Lauren Nicolle Taylor
Set in 1953, Nora & Kettle explores the collision of two teenagers facing extraordinary adversity. Kettle, an orphaned Japanese American, is struggling to make a life in the aftermath of an event in history not often referred to--the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the removal of children from orphanages for having "one drop of Japanese blood in them." Nora, the daughter of a civil rights lawyer who is building a compensation case for the interned Japanese Americans, is barely surviving her violent home and dreams of a life outside of the brownstone walls. Their meeting is inevitable, devastating and ultimately healing.
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Notes from the Blender
Trish Cook and Brendan Halpin
Two teenagers -- a heavy-metal-music-loving boy who is still mourning the death of his mother years earlier, and a beautiful, popular girl whose parents divorced because her father is gay -- try to negotiate the complications of family and peer relationships as they get to know each other after learning that their father and mother are marrying each other.
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Notes on a Near-Life Experience
Olivia Birdsall
Mia never thought she'd be the child of a broken home. Yet when she's 15 years old, one day her father just up and moves out. As her family life crumbles, her love life is finally coming together. Julian, her brother Allen's best friend and her longtime crush, has finally noticed her—and being with Julian makes her happier than she can put into words. Meanwhile, her mother has disappeared into work, her brother is skipping school and acting weird, and her father is cohabitating with a frighteningly sexy Peruvian woman named Paloma. Mia wishes the divorce would just go away so she could focus on Julian...but she can't ignore her problems forever. In this honest, witty, utterly accessible winner of the Delacorte Press Contest, first-time author Olivia Birdsall creates an authentic and lovable teenager in Mia.
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Not Even Bones
Rebecca Schaeffer
Nita's mother hunts monsters and, after Nita dissects and packages them, sells them online, but when Nita follows her conscience to help a live monster escape, she is sold on the black market in his place.