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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Janine and the Field Day Finish
Maryann Cocca-Leffler
Today is field day and even though Janine is not good at sports, she is ready to compete. Her body just doesn't work like the other kids'. But no matter what, Janine cheers for everyone and tries her best. During the big race, her classmate Abby trips and falls. Janine is right there to help. But Abby is crushed that she won't win the race. Can Janine teach Abby and her classmates that being a winner is not always about being number one?
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Jazz Owls: A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
Margarita Engle
Thousands of Navy sailors are pouring into Los Angeles on their way to the front lines of World War II. They are young, scared, and longing to feel alive before they have to face the horrors of battle. Hot jazz music spiced with cool salsa rhythms calls them to dance with the local Mexican American girls, who jitterbug all night before working all day in the canneries. Proud to do their part for the war effort, these Jazz Owl girls dance with the sailors until the blazing summer night when racial violence leads to murder. Suddenly the restless white sailors are attacking the girls' brothers and boyfriends. The cool, loose zoot suits they wear are supposedly the reason for the violence - but really these boys are viciously beaten and arrested simply because of the color of their skin.
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Jesus Land: A Memoir
Julia Scheeres
It's the mid-1980s. Julia Scheeres and her adopted brother David are sixteen years old and have just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees and trailer parks, and a racism neither of them is prepared for. While Julia is white, her close relationship with David, who is black, makes them both outcasts. At home, a distant mother, more involved with her church's missionaries than with her own children, and a violent father only compound their problems. When high-school hormones, bullying, and a deep-seated restlessness prove too much to bear, they are packed off to a Christian boot camp in the Dominican Republic. Surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribe is governed by a disciplinary regime that demands its teens repent for their sins, which few of them are aware they've committed. How they made it through with heart and soul intact is told here with candor and humor.
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Jimi & Me
Jaime Adolf
After his father's tragic death, twelve-year-old Keith James moves from Brooklyn to a small midwestern town where his mixed race heritage is not accepted, but he finds comfort in the music of Jimi Hendrix and the friendship of a white classmate.
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Jing's Family (All Kinds of Families)
Elliot Riley
There are many types of families. Meet Jing and her family and learn about what adoption means.
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Jin Woo
Eve Bunting
Davey is dubious about having a new adopted brother from Korea, but when he finds out that his parents still love him, he decides that having a baby brother will be fine.
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Jubilee Journey
Carolyn Meyer
Emily Rose has always felt comfortable growing up in Connecticut with her African American mother and her "French American" father, but when they spend some time with her great-grandmother in Texas, Emily Rose learns about her black heritage and uncovers some new and exciting parts of her own identity.
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Julián is a Mermaid
Jessica Love
While riding the subway home from the pool with his abuela one day, Julián notices three women spectacularly dressed up. Their hair billows in brilliant hues, their dresses end in fishtails, and their joy fills the train car. When Julián gets home, daydreaming of the magic he's seen, all he can think about is dressing up just like the ladies in his own fabulous mermaid costume: a butter-yellow curtain for his tail, the fronds of a potted fern for his headdress. But what will Abuela think about the mess he makes -- and even more importantly, what will she think about how Julián sees himself?
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Just Add One Chinese Sister: An Adoption Story
Patricia McMahon and Conor Clarke McCarthy
Claire and her mother are working together on a scrapbook as they relive their first days and hours together following Claire's arrival from her birth home in China.
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Just Like Home
Elizabeth I. Miller
A young Hispanic girl chronicles, in both English and Spanish, her move to the United States, as she finds that while some things are different, some things are just like home.
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Keurium
Jessica Sun Lee
Shay Stone lies in a hospital bed, catatonic -- dead to the world. Her family thinks it's a ploy for attention. Doctors believe it's the result of an undisclosed trauma. At the mercy of memories and visitations, Shay unearths secrets that may have led to her collapse. Will she remain paralyzed in denial? Or can she accept the unfathomable and break free?
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Kids of Appetite
David Arnold
Teens Victor Benucci and Madeline Falco sit in separate police interrogation rooms telling about the misfits who brought them together and their journey sparked by a message in an urn.
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Kimchi & Calamari
Rose Kent
Teenaged Joseph Calderaro, who was adopted from Korea by Italian parents, begins to make important self-discoveries about race and family after his social studies teacher assigns an essay on cultural heritage and tracing the past.
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Knife Edge (Noughts & Crosses, #2)
Malorie Blackman
Following Callum's death, the people who loved him relate how their lives have been changed, especially in reference to his girlfriend, Sephy, and their mixed-race child.
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Lailah's Lunchbox
Reem Faruqi
Now that she is ten, Lailah is delighted that she can fast during the month of Ramadan like her family and her friends in Abu Dhabi, but finding a way to explain to her teacher and classmates in Atlanta is a challenge until she gets some good advice from the librarian, Mrs. Carman.
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Laura Dean Keeps Breaking up with me
Mariko Tamaki
Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley's dream girl, but Freddy is learning she is not the best girlfriend, so she seeks help from a mysterious medium and advice columnists to help her through being a teenager in love.
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Laurie
Elfi Nijssen
Laurie is a little girl who would love to be like other children, but her hearing problems can make that difficult, until she goes to the ear doctor and gets new hearing aids that allow her to hear things around her clearly.
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Legend of Korra: Turf Wars Part One
Michael Dante DiMartino
Relishing their newfound feelings for each other, Korra and Asami leave the Spirit World, but find nothing in Republic City but political hijinks and human vs. spirit conflict. A pompous developer plans to turn the new spirit portal into an amusement park, potentially severing an already tumultuous connection with the spirits. What's more, the triads have realigned and are in a brutal all-out brawl at the city's borders--where hundreds of evacuees have relocated! In order to get through it all, Korra and Asami vow to look out for each other--but first, they've got to get better at being a team and a couple!
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Legend of Korra: Turf Wars Part Two
Dante DiMartino
Recovering from the fight and furious for revenge, Triple Threats member Tokuga solidifies his ties with the duplicitous Wonyong. Meanwhile, when Republic City's housing crisis reaches its peak, Zhu Li sets her sights on the biggest public figure in the city--President Raiko--in a bid for the presidency! With her friend's success, the future of the spirit portal, and the wellbeing of Republic City's citizens at stake, can Korra remain neutral and fulfill her duties as the Avatar?
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Less Than Half, More Than Whole
Kathleen Lacapa and Michael Lapaca
A child who is only part Native American is troubled by his mixed racial heritage.
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Let's Talk About Race
Julius Lester
The author introduces the concept of race as only one component in an individual's or nation's "story."
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Let's Talk About Racism
Bruce Sanders
Uses a question and answer format to explain racism and why some people are treated unfairly because of their skin color or religion and discusses ways of dealing with this issue.
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LGBTQ+ Athletes Claim the Field: Striving for Equality
Kirstin Cronn-Mills
In 2015, the world watched as soccer star Abby Wambach kissed her wife after the US women's World Cup victory. Milwaukee Brewers' minor league first baseman David Denson came out as gay. And Caitlyn (born Bruce) Jenner, an Olympic decathlete, came out as transgender. It hasn't always been this way. Many great athletes have stayed in the closet their whole lives, or at least until retirement. Social attitudes, institutional policies, and laws are slow to change, but they are catching up. Together, athletes, families, educators, allies, and fans are pushing for competitive equity so that every athlete, regardless of identity, can have the opportunity to play at their very best.
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Liberty
Kirby Larson
In 1940s New Orleans, Fish Elliot is a polio-survivor with a knack for inventing and building things, and his African American neighbor Olympia is a girl with a talent for messing things up, but they are united in an effort to save a starving stray dog they call Liberty--and when Liberty is caged by a nasty farmer, they find an unlikely ally in a German prisoner of war, Erich, who is not much older than the two children.
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Lies We Tell Ourselves
Robin Talley
In 1959 Virginia, Sarah, a black student who is one of the first to attend a newly integrated school, forces Linda, a white integration opponent's daughter, to confront harsh truths when they work together on a school project.