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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15 Things NOT to do with a Baby
Margaret McAllister
A girl learns what not to do with her new brother, including sending him to play with an elephant or hanging him from the clothesline, and also what to do.
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A Band of Angels
Deborah Hopkinson
The daughter of a slave forms a gospel singing group and goes on tour to raise money to save for Fisk University.
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Abby Spencer Goes To Bollywood
Varsha Bajaj
What thirteen year old Abby wants most is to meet her father. She just never imagined he would be a huge film star, in Bollywood! Now she's traveling to Mumbai to get to know her famous father. Abby is overwhelmed by the culture clash, the pressures of being the daughter of India's most famous celebrity, and the burden of keeping her identity a secret. But as she learns to navigate her new surroundings, she just might discover where she really belongs.
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ABC: A Family Alphabet Book
Bobbie Combs
Introduces the alphabet with whimsical illustrations portraying gay and lesbian parents and racial diversity.
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A Boy No More
Harry Mazer
After his father is killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Adam, his mother, and sister are evacuated from Hawaii to California, where he must deal with his feelings about the war, Japanese internment camps, his father, and his own identity.
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A Brave Spaceboy: Moving is an Adventure!
Dana Kessimakis Smith
On moving day, a little boy bids farewell to his fears by playing pretend: he turns the scary unknown world into an out-of-this-world adventure by handcrafting his own rocket and astronaut outfit for a visit to Mars.
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Absolutely Almost
Lisa Graff
Ten-year-old Albie has never been the smartest, tallest, best at gym, greatest artist, or most musical in his class, as his parents keep reminding him, but new nanny Calista helps him uncover his strengths and take pride in himself.
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A Card for My Father
Samantha Thornhill
A Card For My Father by Samantha Thornhill with illustrations by Morgan Clement is the first title in a trilogy of picture books exploring the lasting effects, big and small, of a father’s incarceration on his first-grade daughter, Flora. In A Card For My Father, how can Flora complete her class assignment to write a Father’s Day card when she’s never met her father?
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A Child's Calendar
John Updike
A collection of twelve poems describing the activities in a child's life and the changes in the weather as the year moves from January to December.
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A Church for All
Gayle E. Pitman
Celebrates a diverse community on a Sunday morning at an inclusive church that welcomes all people regardless of age, class, race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Come to the church for all!
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A Clear Spring
Barbara Sjoholm
While visiting relatives in Seattle, twelve-year-old Willa explores the ethnic diversity of her family and investigates the pollution of a salmon stream.
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Adaptation
Malinda Lo
Flocks of birds are hurling themselves at aeroplanes across America. Thousands of people die. On Reese's long drive home, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won't tell them what happened. For Reese, though, this is just the start. She can't remember anything from the time between her accident and the day she woke up almost a month later. She only knows one thing: she's different now. Torn between longtime crush David and new girl Amber, the real question is: who can she trust?
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A Day's Work
Eve Bunting
When Francisco, a young Mexican American boy, tries to help his grandfather find work, he discovers that even though the old man cannot speak English, he has something even more valuable to teach Francisco.
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A Different Pond
Bao Phi
As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. Between hope-filled casts, Bao's father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam.
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Adopted like Me: My Book of Adopted Heroes
Ann Angel
Adopted Like Me is a children's picture book that tells the stories of famous and inspirational people, all of whom were adopted. Read about great musicians like Bo Diddley, politicians like Nelson Mandela, stars like Marilyn Monroe as well as inventors, athletes, a princess skilled in judo and fencing, and many more.
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Adoption
Laurie Willis
Collection of eleven essays pertaining to the topic of adoption, covering open adoption, transracial adoptions, challenging same-sex couples the right to adopt, and other related topics.
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A Family is a Family is a Family
Sara O'Leary
When a teacher asks the children in her class to think about what makes their families special, the answers are all different in many ways -- but the same in the one way that matters most of all. One child is worried that her family is just too different to explain, but listens as her classmates talk about what makes their families special. One is raised by a grandmother, and another has two dads. One is full of stepsiblings, and another has a new baby.
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A Forever Family
Roslyn Banish and Jennifer Jordan-Wong
Eight-year-old Jennifer Jordan-Wong describes her adoption by a family after four years of living as a foster child with many different families.
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A Friendship for Today
Patrick C. McKissack
In 1954, when desegregation comes to Kirkland, Missouri, ten-year-old Rosemary faces many changes and challenges at school and at home as her parents separate.
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After Tupac & D Foster
Jacqueline Woodson
In the New York City borough of Queens in 1996, three girls bond over their shared love of Tupac Shakur's music, as together they try to make sense of the unpredictable world in which they live.
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Afterworlds
Scott Westerfeld
Darcy Patel has put college on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. With a contract in hand, she arrives in New York City with no apartment, no friends, and all the wrong clothes. But lucky for Darcy, she’s taken under the wings of other seasoned and fledgling writers who help her navigate the city and the world of writing and publishing. Over the course of a year, Darcy finishes her book, faces critique, and falls in love.
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A Home for Leo
Vin Vogel
Leo grew up in the sea. He has a family of sea lions he loves. He’s happy, but he has always known he was different. Then Leo’s suddenly reunited with his human parents, and he finds he loves them too. But he still feels like a fish out of water. Being from two worlds and having two families isn’t so easy. Leo has a lot to figure out…
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A is for Activist
Innosanto Nagara
A is for Activist is an ABC board book written and illustrated for the next generation of progressives: families who want their kids to grow up in a space that is unapologetic about activism, environmental justice, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and everything else that activists believe in and fight for. The alliteration, rhyming, and vibrant illustrations make the book exciting for children, while the issues it brings up resonate with their parents' values of community, equality, and justice.
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A Line in the Dark
Malinda Lo
When Chinese American teenager Jess Wong's best friend Angie falls in love with a girl from the nearby boarding school, Jess expects heartbreak. But when everybody's secrets start to be revealed, the stakes quickly elevate from love or loneliness to life or death.
