The Diverse Families bookshelf was created and funded through numerous grants. Due to lack of additional grants and the loss of key personnel, the project has come to an end. We have tremendously enjoyed creating this database and hope that it can help bring readers and books together.
Browse by Race & Culture:
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Golden Boy
Tara Sullivan
Light eyes, yellow hair and white skin-- Habo is an albino, strange and alone. His father, unable to accept Habo, abandons the family. When they are forced from their small Tanzanian village, Habo knows he is to blame. The family seeks refuge with an aunt in Mwanza....
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Goldie Vance, Volume Four
Hope Larson and Jackie Ball
Sixteen-year-old Marigold “Goldie” Vance has an insatiable curiosity and dreams of one day becoming a detective. Luckily for Goldie, with the St. Pascal Rockin’ the Beach Music Festival coming to town, there’s plenty of inexplicable shenanigans keeping her gumshoe brain busy, from mysterious power outages, to missing musicians, to Russian spies hiding in the shadows.
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Goldie Vance, Volume One
Hope Larson
Sixteen-year-old Marigold “Goldie” Vance lives at a Florida resort with her dad, who manages the place. Her mom, who divorced her dad years ago, works as a live mermaid at a club downtown. Goldie has an insatiable curiosity, which explains her dream to one day become the hotel’s in-house detective. When Charles, the current detective, encounters a case he can’t crack, he agrees to mentor Goldie in exchange for her help solving the mystery.
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Goldie Vance, Volume Three
Hope Larson and Jackie Ball
Sixteen-year-old Marigold "Goldie" Vance has an insatiable curiosity. She lives at a Florida resort with her dad, who manages the place, and it's her dream to one day become the hotel's in-house detective. When Sugar, the spoiled daughter of the crossed Palm's owner, come to Goldie with a mystery of her own, Goldie dives headfirst into the world of Prescription 1 racing, jealousy, and sabotage. There may be more to Sugar and her family than meets the eye...even an eye as keen as Goldie's!
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Goldie Vance, Volume Two
Hope Larson
Sixteen-year-old Marigold “Goldie” Vance lives at a Florida resort with her dad, who manages the place. Her mom, who divorced her dad years ago, works as a live mermaid at a club downtown. Goldie has an insatiable curiosity, which explains her dream to one day become the hotel’s in-house detective. For now she has to settle for helping out the current hotel detective, Walter. When a mysterious astronaut washes up on the beach, Goldie and her best friend Cheryl are on the case! Where did she come from? Where was she going? And what does she want with...Cheryl?
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Goodbye Stranger
Rebecca Stead
As Bridge makes her way through seventh grade on Manhattan's Upper West Side with her best friends, curvacious Em, crusader Tab, and a curious new friend--or more than friend--Sherm, she finds the answer she has been seeking since she barely survived an accident at age eight: "What is my purpose?"
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Goyangi Means Cat
Christine McDonnell
An understanding cat helps a young Korean girl adjust to her new home in America.
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Gracias/Thanks
Pat Mora
A young multiracial boy celebrates family, friendship, and fun by telling about some of the everyday things for which he is thankful.
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Gracias, the Thanksgiving Turkey
Joy Cowley
Trouble ensues when Papa gets Miguel a turkey to fatten up for Thanksgiving and Miguel develops an attachment to it.
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Grand
Marla Stewart Konrad
This picture book shows the many special and everyday moments that occur between grandparents and grandchildren.
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Grandfather Counts
Andrea Cheng and Ange Zhang
When her maternal grandfather comes from China, Helen, who is biracial, develops a special bond with him despite their age and language differences.
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Grandfather's Journey
Allen Say
A Japanese American man recounts his grandfather's journey to America, which he later also undertakes, and describes the feelings of being torn by a love for two different countries.
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Grandmother's Visit
Betty Quan
Grandmother lives with Grace's family. She tells her stories about growing up in China and together they savor the flavors of her childhood. Grandmother says goodbye when she drops Grace off at school every morning and hello when she picks her up at the end of the day. Then, Grandmother stops walking Grace to and from school, and the door to her room stays closed. One day, Grandmother's room is empty. And one day, Grandmother is buried. After the funeral, Grace's mom turns on all the outside lights so that Grandmother's spirit can find its way home for one final goodbye.
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Grandpa, Is Everything Black Bad?
Sandy Lynne Holman
An illustrated story of an African American boy who comes to appreciate his dark skin by learning about his African heritage from his grandfather.
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Grandparents Raising Kids
Rae Simons
In 2005, 6 million children were being raised by their grandparents. Sometimes, their grandchildren's parents had died, sometimes they were in prison, and sometimes they just couldn't cope with raising children. When grandparents take in their grandchildren to raise, they have some difficulties most families don't have. They're older, for one thing, and they also have to deal with their own children and that relationship. But they have the wisdom and experience they've gained from raising one set of children already, and this can help. The families in this book have had both good and bad experiences, but they have learned a great deal through them.
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Grandparents Song
Sheila Hamanaka
A rhyming celebration of ancestry and of the diversity that flourishes in this country.
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GreenBean: True Blue Family
Elizabeth Blake
Greenbean is worried that she does not belong in her family because she is different, but discovers that belonging is about something different.
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Greenglass House
Kate Milford
It's wintertime at Greenglass House. The creaky smuggler's inn is always quiet during this season, and twelve-year-old Milo, the innkeepers' adopted son, plans to spend his holidays relaxing. But on the first icy night of vacation, out of nowhere, the guest bell rings. Then rings again. And again. Soon Milo's home is bursting with odd, secretive guests, each one bearing a strange story that is somehow connected to the rambling old house. As objects go missing and tempers flare, Milo and Meddy, the cook's daughter, must decipher clues and untangle the web of deepening mysteries to discover the truth about Greenglass House -- and themselves.
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Greetings, Leroy
Itah Sadu
The first day at a new school is nerve-wracking enough, never mind when it's in a new country! In this lively picture book from award-winning storyteller Itah Sadu, Roy realizes he may come to love his new home in Canada as much as he loves his old home in Jamaica.
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Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood
Melissa Hart
Torn between the high socioeconomic status of her father and the bohemian lifestyle of her mother, Melissa Hart tells a compelling story of contradiction in this coming-of-age memoir. Set in 1970s Southern California, Gringa is the story of a young girl conflicted by two extremes. On the one hand theres life with her mother, who leaves her father to begin a lesbian relationship, taking Hart and her two siblings along. Hart tells of her moms new life in a Hispanic neighborhood of Oxnard, California, and how these new surroundings begin to positively shape Hart herself. At the opposite extreme is her fathers white-bread well-to-do security, which is predictable and stable and boring. Hart is made all the more fraught with frustration when a judge rules that being raised by two women is 'unnatural' and grants her father primary custody.
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Hairs=Pelitos
Sandra Cisneros
A girl describes how each person in the family has hair that looks and acts different: Papa's like a broom, Kiki's like fur, and Mama's with the sweet smell of bread before it's baked. Desde el corte de pelo tipo cepillo de papá, hasta la espesa cabellera de Kiki o el pelo resbaloso de Nenny, ésta es una familia con todo tipo de pelo. Y luego está mamá, cuyo pelo tiene un olor dulce como el pan. El pelo de mamá es único e incomparable.
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Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
Lisa Dunn-Dern
An interracial family enjoys a Saturday ritual. After a pancake breakfast, the mother goes to a hair salon, while the little girl and father style each other's hair. Because her father is bald, the little girl must use her imagination, play-dough, and ribbons to create his hair-do. Each week, the family enjoys each other's new hairstyles.
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Half a Heart
Rosellen Brown
When her biracial daughter appears suddenly after eighteen years searching for the mother who left her, former civil rights activist Miriam Vener begins a painful confrontation with her past.
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Half and Half
Lensey Namioka
At Seattle's annual Folk Fest, twelve-year-old Fiona and her older brother are torn between trying to please their Chinese grandmother and making their Scottish grandparents happy.
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Half and Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural
Claudine C. O'Hearn
Eighteen biracial and bicultural writers address the difficulties and benefits of growing up different in the United States. As we approach the twenty-first century, biracialism and biculturalism are becoming increasingly common. Skin color and place of birth are no longer reliable signifiers of one's identity or origin. Simple questions like 'What are you?' and 'Where are you from?' aren't answered -- they are discussed. These eighteen essays, joined by a shared sense of duality, address the difficulties of not fitting into and the benefits of being part of two worlds. Through the lens of personal experience, they offer a broader spectrum of meaning for race and culture. And in the process, they map a new ethnic terrain that transcends racial and cultural division.