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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The Window
Michael Dorris
When ten-year-old Rayona's Native American mother enters a treatment facility, her estranged father, a Black man, finally introduces her to his side of the family, who are not at all what she expected.
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They Both Die at the End
Adam Silvera
In a near-future New York City where a service alerts people on the day they will die, teenagers Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio meet using the Last Friend app and are faced with the challenge of living a lifetime on their End Day.
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They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group
Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Documents the history and origin of the Ku Klux Klan from its beginning in Pulaski, Tennessee, and provides personal accounts, congressional documents, diaries, and more.
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The Year of the Baby
Andrea Cheng
Anna and her best friends Laura and Camille return in an engaging new story. Anna's family has adopted a new baby from China, but her new sister is not thriving and refuses to eat. When Anna and her friends are assigned a science experiment in school, they decide to use the assignment as a way to help Baby Kaylee.
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The Year of the Fortune Cookie
Andrea Cheng
Eleven-year-old Anna takes a trip to China and learns more about herself and her Chinese heritage.
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Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry
Susan Vaught
A family mystery leads Dani Beans to investigate the secrets of Ole Miss and the dark history of race relations in Oxford, Mississippi.
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This Side of Home
Reneé Watson
Twins Nikki and Maya Younger always agreed on most things, but as they head into their senior year they react differently to the gentrification of their Portland, Oregon neighborhood and the new--white--family that moves in after their best friend and her mother are evicted.
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Three Little Words
Sarah N. Harvey
When Sid leaves his foster family on their remote island home in search of the mother he doesn't remember and a brother he's never met, he's ill-prepared for the surprises he finds.
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Three Names of Me
Mary Cummings
A girl adopted from China explains that her three names--one her birth mother whispered in her ear, one the babysitters at her orphanage called her, and one her American parents gave her--are each an important part of who she is. Includes scrapbooking ideas for other girls adopted from China.
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Three Pennies
Melanie Crowder
In San Francisco, eleven-year-old Marin desperately searches for her birthmother knowing time is running out before she is adopted, and discovers for the first time in her life what it feels like to be truly wanted by someone.
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Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies
Ann Turner
A boy who came from far away to be adopted by a couple in this country remembers how unfamiliar and frightening some of the things were in his new home, before he accepted the love to be found there.
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Through My Window
Tony Bradman
When Jo is sick and has to stay home from school, her mother promises her a special surprise, and all day long she waits eagerly to see what it might be.
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Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1)
Collen Houck
Seventeen-year-old Oregon teenager Kelsey forms a bond with a circus tiger who is actually one of two brothers, Indian princes Ren and Kishan, who were cursed to live as tigers for eternity, and she travels with him to India where the tiger's curse may be broken once and for all.
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Tolerance
Kimberley Jane Pryor
Explains what tolerance is, describes different ways it can be expressed, and discusses why it should be practiced.
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Transracial Adoption: Children and Parents Speak
Constance Pohl
Explores the issues related to interracial and international adoptions, using interviews with black, biracial, Asian, and Hispanic young people who were adopted into white or biracial families.
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Trevor's Story: Growing Up Biracial
Bethany Kandel
Ten-year-old Trevor Sage-El describes his life at home and at school, his feelings about being the son of a white mother and a black father, and what he likes and does not like about being biracial.
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Tripping on the Color Line: Black-White Multiracial Families in a Racially Divided World
Heather M. Dalmage
Through interviews with individuals from black-white multiracial families, together with sociological analysis, this study examines the challenges faced by people living in such families, and explores how their experiences demonstrate the need for rethinking race in America.
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Twenty Yawns
Jane Smiley
Featuring lyrical text and beautiful illustrations, this bedtime tale from Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley and Caldecott Honor recipient Lauren Castillo evokes the splashy fun of the beach and the quietude of a moonlit night, with twenty yawns sprinkled in for children to discover and count. As her mom reads a bedtime story, Lucy drifts off. But later, she awakens in a dark, still room, and everything looks mysterious. How will she ever get back to sleep?
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Two Dads: A Book About Adoption
Carolyn Robertson
Having two dads is double the fun! Many families are different. This family has two dads. A beautifully illustrated, affirming story of life with two dads, written from the perspective of their adopted child.
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Two Mrs. Gibsons
Toyomi Igus
The biracial daughter of an African American father and a Japanese mother fondly recalls growing up with her mother and her father's mother, two very different but equally loving women.
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Two Naomis
Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and Audrey Vernick
Other than their first names, Naomi Marie and Naomi Edith are sure they have nothing in common, and they wouldn't mind keeping it that way. Naomi Marie starts clubs at the library and adores being a big sister. Naomi Edith loves quiet Saturdays and hanging with her best friend in her backyard. And while Naomi Marie's father lives a few blocks away, Naomi Edith wonders how she's supposed to get through each day a whole country apart from her mother. When Naomi Marie's mom and Naomi Edith's dad get serious about dating, each girl tries to cling to the life she knows and loves. Then their parents push them into attending a class together, where they might just have to find a way to work with each other--and maybe even join forces to find new ways to define family.
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Two White Rabbits
Jairo Buitrago and Elisa Amado
A young child describes what it is like to be a migrant as she and her father travel north toward the U.S. border. They travel mostly on the roof of a train known as The Beast, but the little girl doesn't know where they are going. She counts the animals by the road, the clouds in the sky, the stars. Sometimes she sees soldiers. She sleeps, dreaming that she is always on the move, although sometimes they are forced to stop and her father has to earn more money before they can continue their journey.
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Under a Painted Sky
Stacey Lee
All Samantha wanted was to move back to New York and pursue her music, which was difficult enough being a Chinese girl in Missouri, 1849. Then her fate takes a turn for the worse after a tragic accident leaves her with nothing and she breaks the law in self-defense. With help from Annamae, a runaway slave she met at the scene of her crime, the two flee town for the unknown frontier. But life on the Oregon Trail is unsafe for two girls. Disguised as Sammy and Andy, two boys heading for the California gold rush, each search for a link to their past and struggle to avoid any unwanted attention. Until they merge paths with a band of cowboys turned allies, and Samantha can’t stop herself from falling for one. But the law is closing in on them and new setbacks come each day, and the girls will quickly learn there are not many places one can hide on the open trail.
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Under the Mesquite
Guadalupe Garcia McCall
Throughout her high school years, as her mother battles cancer, Lupita takes on more responsibility for her house and seven younger siblings, while finding refuge in acting and writing poetry.
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Unplugged: Ella Gets Her Family Back
Laura Pedersen
Upset that her family is so focused on the screens on their various electronic devices that they no longer talk, laugh, and play games together, Ella takes all of their chargers and small devices.