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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Coping When a Parent is in Jail
John J. La Valle
This book discusses problems that are common to children who have incarcerated parents.
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Court of Fives
Kate Elliott
When a scheming lord tears Jess's family apart, she must rely on her unlikely friendship with Kal, a high-ranking Patron boy, and her skill at Fives, an intricate, multi-level athletic competition that offers a chance for glory, to protect her Commoner mother and mixed-race sisters and save her father's reputation.
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Crazy Beautiful
Lauren Baratz-Logsted
In this contemporary retelling of "Beauty and the Beast," a teenaged boy whose hands were amputated in an explosion and a gorgeous girl whose mother has recently died form an instant connection when they meet on their first day as new students.
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Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America
Mitchell r Gold and Mindy Drucker
A mental health crisis faces American teens right now--and it is one we can solve. Hundreds of thousands of gay teens face traumatic depression, fear, rejection, persecution, and isolation--usually alone. Studies show they are 190 percent more likely to use drugs or alcohol and four times more likely to attempt suicide. Homophobia and discrimination are at the heart of their pain. Love, support, and acceptance--all within our power to give--can save them.
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Crossing Lines
Paul Volponi
High school senior Adonis struggles to do the right thing when his fellow football players escalate their bullying of a new classmate, Alan, who is transgendered.
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Cursed
Karol Ruth Silverstein
Depicts young teen Ricky Bloom's struggles with her recent juvenile inflammatory disease diagnosis, which comes amid family upheaval and challenges at school.
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Cut Both Ways
Carrie Mesrobian
Senior Will Caynes must face unsettling feelings for his best friend Angus after they share a drunken kiss, while also embarking on his first real relationship with sophomore Brandy--all as the burden of home-life troubles weigh heavily.
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Damsel Distressed
Kelsey Macke
A teen girl struggles with obesity, self-harm, and the infuriatingly perfect stepsister in her journey to overcome the stigmas put on her life, on her friendships, and on her future.
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Dangerous
Shannon Hale
When aspiring astronaut Maisie Danger Brown, who was born without a right hand, and the other space camp students get the opportunity to do something amazing in space, Maisie must prove how dangerous she can be and how far she is willing to go to protect everything she has ever loved.
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Darius the Great is Not Okay
Adib Khorram
Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He's a Fractional Persian -- half, his mom's side -- and his first ever trip to Iran is about to change his life. Darius has never really fit in at home, and he's sure things are going to be the same in Iran. His clinical depression doesn't exactly help matters, and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents only makes things harder. Then Darius meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and everything changes. Soon, they're spending their days together, playing soccer, eating faludeh, and talking for hours on a secret rooftop overlooking the city's skyline. Sohrab calls him Darioush the original Farsi version of his name -- and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he's Darioush to Sohrab. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Adib Khorram's brilliant debut is for anyone who's ever felt not good enough then met a friend who makes them feel so much better than okay.
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Dark Silence
Maureen Crane Wartski
Randy wanted things to be the way they used to be, but her mother is dead, her father has remarried, they've moved to a new neighborhood and her first friend in it cuts her off for no reason that Randy can figure out.
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Dark Water
Laura McNeal
Living in a cottage on her uncle's southern California avocado ranch since her parent's messy divorce, fifteen-year-old Pearl Dewitt meets and falls in love with an illegal migrant worker, and is trapped with him when wildfires approach his makeshift forest home.
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Dash & Lily's Book of Dares
Rachel Cohn
In a story told in the alternating voices of Dash and Lily, two sixteen-year-olds carry on a wintry scavenger hunt at Christmastime in New York, neither knowing quite what--or who--they will find.
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Daughter of the Burning City
Amanda Foody
Sixteen-year-old Sorina has spent most of her life within the smoldering borders of the Gomorrah Festival. Yet even among the many unusual members of the traveling circus-city, Sorina stands apart as the only illusion-worker born in hundreds of years. This rare talent allows her to create illusions that others can see, feel, and touch, with personalities all their own. Her creations are her family, and together they make up the cast of the festival's freak show. But no matter how lifelike they may seem, her illusions are still just that--illusions, and not truly real. Or so she has always believed--until one of them is murdered. Sorina must find the culprit and determine how they killed a person who doesn't exist. Her search leads her to the gossip-worker Luca, and their investigation sends them through a haze of political turmoil and forbidden romance into sinister corners of the festival. But as the killer continues to murder Sorina's illusions, she must get to the horrifying truth before all her loved ones disappear.
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Dear Herculine
Aaron Apps
A book- length epistolary collection of hybrid-, trans-, and inter-genre prose, DEAR HERCULINE is an intertextual project that recalls portions of the 19th-century French hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin's memoirs, discovered and re- published by Michel Foucault. The medical reassignment of Herculine's gender eventually led to his/her death in February of 1868. Herculine's experiences are set against and interwoven into the author's experiences as an intersexed body through the epistolary form.
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Dear Martin
Nic Stone
Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.
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Dear Rachel Maddow
Adrienne Kisner
Brianna gets the lead in the Thanksgiving school play. She'll be Hero the Hen! She almost forgets about the coughing and breathing trouble she's been having.Brianna loves practicing her leaping and flapping. But at the dress rehearsal, she has a bad coughing attack and feels a tightness in her chest. The teacher calls 911 and the paramedics take Brianna to the hospital. There, Dr. Anderson diagnoses Brianna with asthma. Brianna begins to learn about her disease and how to manage it. Things are soon under control, and she's back on stage for her debut!
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Dear Yvette (Throwback Diaries)
Ni-Ni Simone
After a street fights ends with a jail sentence, Yvette is forced to live far from anything and anyone she's ever known, but starting her life over again may show her what it means to have a real family.
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Debbie Harry Sings in French
Meagan Brothers
When Johnny completes an alcohol rehabilitation program and his mother sends him to live with his uncle in North Carolina, he meets Maria, who seems to understand his fascination with the new wave band Blondie, and he learns about his deceased father's youthful forays into "glam rock," which gives him perspective on himself, his past, and his current life.
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Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division
Jon Ginoli
Set against the changing decades of music, we follow the band from their inception in San Francisco, to their search for a music label and a permanent drummer to their current status as indie rock icons. We see the highs―touring with Green Day―and the lows―homophobic fans―of striving for acceptance and success in the world of rock.
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Devils Within
S.F. Henson
Killing isn't supposed to be easy. But it is. It's the after that's hard to deal with. Nate was eight the first time he stabbed someone; he was eleven when he earned his red laces--a prize for spilling blood for "the cause." And he was fourteen when he murdered his father (and the leader of The Fort, a notorious white supremacist compound) in self-defense, landing in a treatment center while the state searched for his next of kin. Now, in the custody of an uncle he never knew existed, who wants nothing to do with him, Nate just wants to disappear. Enrolled in a new school under a false name, so no one from The Fort can find him, he struggles to forge a new life, trying to learn how to navigate a world where people of different races interact without enmity. But he can't stop awful thoughts from popping into his head, or help the way he shivers with a desire to commit violence. He wants to be different--he just doesn't know where to start. Then he meets Brandon, a person The Fort conditioned Nate to despise on sight. But Brandon's also the first person to treat him like a human instead of a monster. Brandon could never understand Nate's dark past, so Nate keeps quiet. And it works for a while. But all too soon, Nate's worlds crash together, and he must decide between his own survival and standing for what's right, even if it isn't easy. Even if society will never be able to forgive him for his sins.
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Die for Me
Amy Plum
After their parents are killed in a car accident, sixteen-year-old Kate Mercier and her older sister Georgia, each grieving in her own way, move to Paris to live with their grandparents and Kate finds herself powerfully drawn to the handsome but elusive Vincent who seems to harbor a mysterious and dangerous secret.
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Dirty One
Michael Graves
Set in the 1980s, Dirty one follows a pack of adolescent characters coming of age in a the suburban town of Leominster, Massachussetts.
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Disability and Families
Hilary W. Poole
Looks at the many different types of disabilities that exist, and discusses how these situations can be a challenge for families, but also a source of great strength.
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Divorce and Children
Maria L. Howell
Explores the issues surrounding divorce and children. Presents diversity of opinion on the topic, including both conservative and liberal points of view in an even balance.