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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What the Night Sings
Vesper Stamper
Liberated from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in 1945, Gerta has lost her family and everything she knew. Without her Papa, her music, or even her true identity, she must move past the task of surviving and onto living her life. Gerta meets Lev, a fellow teen survivor, and Michah, who helps Jews reach Palestine. With a newfound Jewish identity she never knew she had, and a return to the life of music she thought she lost forever, Gerta must choose how to build a new future.
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When Aidan Became a Brother
Kyle Lukoff
When Aidan was born, everyone thought he was a girl. His parents gave him a pretty name, his room looked like a girl's room, and he wore clothes that other girls liked wearing. After he realized he was a trans boy, Aidan and his parents fixed the parts of his life that didn't fit anymore, and he settled happily into his new life. Then Mom and Dad announce that they're going to have another baby, and Aidan wants to do everything he can to make things right for his new sibling from the beginning--from choosing the perfect name to creating a beautiful room to picking out the cutest onesie. But what does "making things right" actually mean? And what happens if he messes up? With a little help, Aidan comes to understand that mistakes can be fixed with honesty and communication, and that he already knows the most important thing about being a big brother: how to love with his whole self.
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When Christmas Feels Like Home
Gretchen Griffith
When his family moves from a small Mexican village to North Carolina, Eduardo asks how soon he will feel at home, and slowly his Tio Miguel's seemingly impossible replies come true until, at last, he can put out the Nativity scene he carved with his grandfather.
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When Grown-Ups Fall in Love
Barbara Lynn Edmonds
This book is a sweet poem which shows families with mom and dad, two moms, and two dads. The large, colorful illustrations are great for group storytime or for one child sitting on your lap. Suitable for reading to children from newborns to 7-year-olds. The book also includes coloring pages as well as space for children to write their own family stories. Gay-friendly preschool literature is a long overdue resource for parents and teachers, both gay and straight. The author wants children with gay parents to feel included in the world of children's literature, and also wants to help straight parents provide their children with books which promote an appreciation of diversity.
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When I Grow Up...
Paula Vasquez
All of the children in Miss Ester's class know what they want to be like when they grow up: their families! And each family is special and unique. Readers will be surprised and delighted to find that Johnny the duckling's mom and dad have curly tails, stubby noses, and hooves. Johnny and his classmates make it easy for parents to show their little ones that there are many types of families, and they're all made of love.
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When I Miss You
Cornelia Maude Spelman
A young guinea pig describes situations that make him miss his parents, how it feels to miss them, and what he can do to feel better.
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When Jessie Came Across the Sea
Amy Hest
When a young girl from a poor eastern European village learns that she must leave her beloved grandmother for a new life - and a new love - in America, they both feel that their hearts will break. The sure and inspired narrative by award-winning author Amy Hest is paired with paintings by P.J. Lynch that glow with warmth and carefully observed detail, creating an unforgettable tribute to the immigrant experience.
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When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race
Judith Stone
During the worst years of official racism in South Africa, the story of one young girl came to symbolize the injustice, corruption, and arbitrary nature of apartheid. Born in 1955 to a pro-apartheid white couple, Sandra Laing was officially registered and raised as a white child. But at a school for whites, she was mercilessly persecuted because of her dark skin and frizzy hair. Her parents attributed her appearance to an interracial union far back in family history. Their neighbors, however, thought Mrs. Laing had committed adultery with a black man. The family was shunned. When Sandra was ten, she was reclassified as "coloured." As a teenager, she eloped with a black man, her parents disowned her, and having known only the privileged world of the whites, she chose to begin again in a poor, all-black township, where life was a desperate struggle against a legal system designed to enslave.
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When the Black Girl Sings
Bil Wright
Adopted by white parents and sent to an exclusive Connecticut girls' school where she is the only black student, fourteen-year-old Lahni Schuler feels like an outcast, particularly when her parents separate, but after attending a local church where she hears gospel music for the first time, she finds her voice.
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When This World Was New
D. H. Figueredo
When his father leads him on a magical trip of discovery through new fallen snow, a young boy who emigrated from his warm island home overcomes fears about living in New York.
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When You Look Out the Window
Gayle E. Pitman
Tells the story of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, one of San Francisco's most well-known and politically active lesbian couples. Describing the view from Phyllis and Del's window, this book shows how one couple's activism transformed their community - and had ripple effects throughout the world.
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Where's Lenny
Ken Wilson-Max
Lenny plays hide-and seek with daddy--but Daddy can't find him anywhere. Where's Lenny?
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Whitewash
Ntozake Shange
A young African-American girl is traumatized when a gang attacks her and her brother on their way home from school and spray-paints her face white. Based on a true story.
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Whoa Baby, Whoa!
Grace Nichols
A baby finally finds something to do that does not make everyone in the family tell him "No."
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Who Belongs Here? An American Story
Margy Burns Knight
Describes the new life of Nary, a Cambodian refugee, in America, as well as his encounters with prejudice. Includes some general history of U.S. immigration.
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Who Do I Look Like?
Mary Schulte
A young girl finds that she looks a little like everyone in her family, but mostly like herself.
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Whoever You Are
Mem Fox
Despite the differences between people around the world, there are similarities that join us together, such as pain, joy, and love.
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Who's In My Family?: All About Our Families
Robie H. Harris
Nellie and her little brother Gus discuss all kinds of families during a day at the zoo and dinner at home with their relatives afterwards.
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Why Am I Different?
Norma Simon
Portrays everyday situations in which children see themselves as "different" in family life, preferences, and aptitudes, and yet feel that being different is all right.
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Without Words
Beti Rozen and Peter Hays
Luiz has just arrived in the United States from Brazil which he misses terribly. But the immigrant has a talent for drawing. Encouraged at school, Luiz creates many images, but soon he idealizes his former life. Later, he will discover that Brazil wasn't always so wonderful. Through art, he learns to adapt to his new life.
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Wolfie the Bunny
Ame Dyckman
When her parents find a baby wolf on their doorstep and decide to raise him as their own, Dot is certain he will eat them all up until a surprising encounter with a bear brings them closer together.
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Yafi's Family: An Ethiopian Boys Journey of Love, Loss, and Adoption
Linda Pettitt and Sharon Darrow
Yafi's family recalls his adoption from Ethiopia with stories, memories, and photographs.
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Yoko
Rosemary Wells
When Yoko brings sushi to school for lunch, her classmates make fun of what she eats--until one of them tries it for himself.
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You're Not My Real Mother
Molly Friedrich
After an adoptive mother tells her daughter all the reasons that she is her "real mother," the young girl realizes that her mother is right, even though they do not look alike.
