9-12 Books | University of Central Florida

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.

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A Long Way Home

Saroo Brierley

An account of the author's inspirational effort to find his India birthplace describes how he was accidentally separated from his family in the mid-1980s, his survival on the streets of Calcutta, his adoption by an Australian family, and his headline-making Google Earth search.
A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend

Emily Horner

As she tries to sort out her feelings of love, seventeen-year-old Cass, a spunky math genius with an introverted streak, finds a way to memorialize her dead best friend.
A Map of Home

Randa Jarrar

Nidali, the rebellious daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, narrates her story from her childhood in Kuwait, her early teenage years in Egypt (to where she and her family fled the 1990 Iraqi invasion), to her family's last flight to Texas.
Amelia Westlake

Erin Gough

Harriet Price has the perfect life: she's a prefect at Rosemead Grammar, she lives in a mansion, and her gorgeous girlfriend is a future prime minister. So when she decides to risk it all by helping bad-girl Will Everhart expose the school's many ongoing issues, Harriet tells herself it's because she too is seeking justice. And definitely not because she finds Will oddly fascinating. Will Everhart can't stand posh people like Harriet, but even she has to admit Harriet's ideas are good - and they'll keep Will from being expelled. That's why she teams up with Harriet to create Amelia Westlake, a fake student who can take the credit for a series of provocative pranks at their school. But the further Will and Harriet's hoax goes, the harder it is for the girls to remember they're sworn enemies - and to keep Amelia Westlake's true identity hidden. As tensions burn throughout the school, how far will they go to keep Amelia Westlake - and their feelings for each other - a secret?
American Ace

Marilyn Nelson

Sixteen-year-old Connor tries to help his severely depressed father, who learned upon his mother's death that Nonno was not his biological father, by doing research that reveals Dad's father was probably a Tuskegee Airman.
Americanized Rebel Without a Green Card

Sara Saedi

In San Jose, California, in the 1990s, teenaged Sara keeps a diary of life as an Iranian American and her discovery that she and her family entered as undocumented immigrants.
And She Was

Jessica Verdi

When Dara finds her birth certificate, she is puzzled to find two strange names on it, but when her mother, Mellie, reveals that she is transgender and transitioned when Dara's biological mother died soon after Dara's birth, Dara is stunned and angry--and she sets off with her friend Sam, in search of the grandparents she never knew existed (and who may be able to fund her tennis career), and the family secrets she can only guess at.
And Then There Were Four

Nancy Werlin

When five high school students are brought together under mysterious circumstances, they begin to piece together a theory that their parents are working together to kill them all.
An Ember in the Ashes

Sabaa Tahir

Laia is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire's greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim that they will help to save her brother from execution.
An Enchantment of Ravens

Margaret Rogerson

Isobel is a prodigy portrait artist with a dangerous set of clients: the sinister fair folk, immortal creatures who cannot bake bread, weave cloth, or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and Isobel's paintings are highly prized. But when she receives her first royal patron--Rook, the autumn prince--she makes a terrible mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes--a weakness that could cost him his life. Furious and devastated, Rook spirits her away to the autumnlands to stand trial for her crime.
An Eye for an Eye (Noughts & Crosses, #1.5)

Malorie Blackman

This is a novella in the Noughts & Crosses series, written especially for World Book Day. In a world where the two classes are divided by colour and never treated as equals; Sephy, a Cross and daughter of a top politician, is six months pregnant. The child's father, Callum, is a Nought, but worse, he is dead and Callum's brother is out for revenge. Can two wrongs make a right?
Anger is a Gift

Mark Oshiro

Six years ago, Moss Jefferies' father was murdered by an Oakland police officer. Along with losing a parent, the media's vilification of his father and lack of accountability has left Moss with near crippling panic attacks. Now, in his sophomore year of high school, Moss and his fellow classmates find themselves increasingly treated like criminals in their own school. New rules. Random locker searches. Constant intimidation and Oakland Police Department stationed in their halls. Despite their youth, the students decide to organize and push back against the administration. When tensions hit a fever pitch and tragedy strikes, Moss must face a difficult choice: give in to fear and hate or realize that anger can actually be a gift.
Angry Management

Chris Crutcher

Every kid in this group wants to fly. Every kid in this group has too much ballast. Mr. Nak's Angry Management group is a place for misfits. A place for stories. And, man, does this crew have stories. There's Angus Bethune and Sarah Byrnes, who can hide from everyone but each other. Together, they will embark on a road trip full of haunting endings and glimmering beginnings. And Montana West, who doesn't step down from a challenge. Not even when the challenge comes from her adoptive dad, who's leading the school board to censor the article she wrote for the school paper. And straightlaced Matt Miller, who had never been friends with outspoken genius Marcus James. Until one tragic week—a week they'd do anything to change—brings them closer than Matt could have ever imagined.
Annabel

Kathleen Winter

Born a boy and a girl but raised as a boy, Wayne or "Annabel" struggles with his identity growing up in a small Canadian town and seeks freedom by moving to the city.
Another Life Altogether

Elaine Beale

In 1970s Northern England, thirteen-year-old Jesse Bennett struggles to come to terms with her attraction to girls while dealing with her mother's mental illness.
Anything Could Happen

Will Walton

Tretch lives in a small town where everybody's in everybody else's business. He's in love with his straight best friend, Matt, and Matt is completely oblivious to the way Tretch feels. Meanwhile, Tretch's family has no idea who he really is, and the girl at the local bookstore has no clue how off-base her crush on him is.
A Place in the World

Malcolm Frierson

Set in Baltimore, Ghana, and rural Georgia, a novel of love, marriage, betrayal, divorce, discovery, African heritage, international adoption, racism, and tragedy unfolds. Kwame and Evelyn adopt Kofi whom they adore. After divorce and remarriage, their nationalistic and interracial families clash. Caught between households, Kofi strives to find himself and battles dangerous anxiety attacks.
A Place to Call Home

Jackie French Koller

Biracial Anna, 15, is a strong character in search of love & roots following sexual abuse & rejection from her own family. Caring for her two younger siblings after their unreliable mother abandons them, fifteen-year-old Anna discovers the difficulties of trying to be a parent.
April Witch

Majgull Azelsson and Linda Schenck

Desirée lies in a hospital bed thinking, dreaming. Born severely disabled, she cannot walk or talk, but she has other capabilities. Desirée is an April witch, clairvoyant and omniscient, traveling through time and space into the world denied her. The woman who gave Desirée up at birth subsequently took in three foster daughters, who know nothing of the existence of their fourth “sister.” Sensing that her own time is short, Desirée has decided that one of the others has lived the life she herself deserved. One day, each of the three women receives a mysterious letter that forces her to examine her past and her present—setting in motion a complex fugue of memory, regret, and confrontation that builds to a shattering climax.
A Question of Manhood

Robin Reardon

When his brother, a soldier in the Army during the Vietnam War, reveals that he is gay, and then is killed in action, sixteen-year-old Paul Landon, haunted by a knowledge he cannot share, gets a glimpse of who his brother really was when he meets JJ, a new employee at his parent's pet supply store--and a gay college freshman.
Archenemy

Paul Hoblin

When defender Addie turns down her teammate and close friend Eva's offer to be more than friends, she is at a loss for what to do when her former friend starts sending her mean notes and sabotaging her play on the field.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Benjamin Alire Senz

Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.
Ash

Malinda Lo

In this variation on the Cinderella story, Ash grows up believing in the fairy realm that the king and his philosophers have sought to suppress, until one day she must choose between a handsome fairy cursed to love her and the King's Huntress whom she loves.
As I Descended

Robin Talley

Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten are Acheron Academy's power couple. Only one thing stands between them and their perfect future: campus superstar Delilah Dufrey. And Lily and Maria are willing to do anything to keep Delilah from winning the distinguished Cawdor Kingsley Prize. Together, Maria and Lily harness the dark power long rumored to be present on the former plantation that houses their school. When feuds turn to fatalities, and madness begins to blur the distinction between what's real and what's imagined, the girls must find a way to stop what they started.
A Silent Voice, Volume 1

Yoshitoki Oima

Shoya is a bully. When Shoko, a girl who can’t hear, enters his elementary school class, she becomes their favorite target, and Shoya and his friends goad each other into devising new tortures for her. But the children’s cruelty goes too far. Shoko is forced to leave the school, and Shoya ends up shouldering all the blame. Six years later, the two meet again. Can Shoya make up for his past mistakes, or is it too late?