This collection contains materials filtered by Direct Diversity Impact from the DIVerse Families bibliography.
DIVerse Families is a comprehensive bibliography that demonstrates the growing diversity of families in the United States. This type of bibliography provides teachers, librarians, counselors, adoption agencies, children/young adults, and especially parents and grandparents needing to empower their children with materials that reflect their families.
Browse by Diversity Impact:
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Like Water
Rebecca Podos
When her father is diagnosed with Hungtington's disease, eighteen-year-old Vanni abandons her plan to flee her small New Mexico hometown after high school graduation and instead spends the summer keeping herself busy with part-time jobs and boys, but that changes after she meets Leigh, whose friendship dares Vanni to ask herself big questions and make new plans.
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Lily and Dunkin
Donna Gephart
Lily Jo McGrother, born Timothy McGrother, is a girl. But being a girl is not so easy when you look like a boy. Especially when you’re in the eighth grade. Dunkin Dorfman, birth name Norbert Dorfman, is dealing with bipolar disorder and has just moved from the New Jersey town he’s called home for the past thirteen years. This would be hard enough, but the fact that he is also hiding from a painful secret makes it even worse. One summer morning, Lily Jo McGrother meets Dunkin Dorfman, and their lives forever change.
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Listen, Slowly
Thanha Lai
A California girl born and raised, Mai can't wait to spend her vacation at the beach. Instead, though, she has to travel to Vietnam with her grandmother, who is going back to find out what really happened to her husband during the Vietnam War. Mai's parents think this trip will be a great opportunity for their out-of-touch daughter to learn more about her culture. But to Mai, those are their roots, not her own. Vietnam is hot, smelly, and the last place she wants to be. Besides barely speaking the language, she doesn't know the geography, the local customs, or even her distant relatives. To survive her trip, Mai must find a balance between her two completely different worlds.
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Little Chicago
Adam Rapp
Little Chicago opens in the office of Children's Services, where eleven-year-old Blacky Brown is being interviewed by a social worker who is trying to determine what has happened to him. At first, Blacky's emotions are blocked, but then he reveals that he has been sexually abused by his mother's boyfriend, and is released into his mother's custody. Thus begins an alternately harrowing and hopeful story of a brave boy's attempts to come to grips with a grim reality. Mary Jane, a classmate who is similarly ostracized, tries to help Blackie, but he soon takes refuge instead in the gun that he buys.
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Little Chick and Mommy Cat
Marta Zafrilla
A tale that explores themes of diversity, adoption, and alternative family life follows a little chick who shares a happy relationship with his loving mother, a cat with soft fur, tickling whiskers, and a long beautiful tail.
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Little Cub
Olivier Dunrea
A young bear cub, who is alone in the world, and Old Bear, who is grumpy and tired of living alone, meet and discover what they have been missing.
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Little & Lion
Brandy Colbert
Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her [stepbrother] Lionel fall in love with the same girl, pushing Lionel's bipolar disorder to spin out of control and forcing Suzette to confront her own demons.
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Little Miss Spider
David Kirk
On her very first day of life, Little Miss Spider searches for her mother and finds love in an unexpected place.
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Little Treasure
Anat Georgy
Little Treasure celebrates love, life, and choice: Natalie sets off on a journey to find a special treasure, with the help of nice people, she finds this treasure inside of her; a little baby, born with the help of a donor. This book will help single parents by choice tell their children how they came into the world in this special way. Sweet illustrations peppered with a healthy dose of humor and lots of love.
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Lives Turned Upside Down: Homeless Children in Their Own Words and Photographs
Jim Hubbard
Two girls and two boys, ages nine to twelve, talk about their own personal experiences with homelessness and life in shelters.
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Living in Secret
Cristina Salat
Amelia's mother helps her run away from her father who has custody and establish a new home and identity in San Francisco with her mother's girlfriend.
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Living Violet (The Cambion Chronicles, #1)
Jaime Reed
Samara is intrigued by her flirtatious co-worker, Caleb, but his secrets draw Samara into a world that places her loved ones in danger, forcing her to take a risk that will change her life forever.
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Living with Mom and Living with Dad
Melanie Walsh
Her parents don't live together anymore, so sometimes the child in this book lives with her mom and cat, and sometimes with Dad. Her bedroom looks a little different in each house, and she keeps some toys in one place and some in another. But her favorite toys she takes with her wherever she goes.
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Lizard Radio
Pat Pat Schmatz
Fifteen-year-old bender Kivali, who was deposited on Earth as an infant by mysterious saurians, must discover her true identity in a futuristic society run by an all-powerful government.
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Locomotion
Jacqueline Woodson
In a series of poems, eleven-year-old Lonnie writes about his life, after the death of his parents, separated from his younger sister, living in a foster home, and finding his poetic voice at school.
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Long Way Down
Jason Reynolds
In Long Way Down, a young boy's brother has just died from a gunshot wound and through brief, powerful poems the reader gets the story of the brothers, the story of urban families, the story of a neighborhood, and the story of the impulse for revenge and the strength it takes to resist that. Terrifically powerful and searingly sad, this is Jason Reynolds continuing to explore some deep truths for young people.
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Looking Out for Sarah
Glenna Lang
Describes a day in the life of a seeing eye dog, from going with his owner to the grocery store and post office, to visiting a class of school children, and playing ball, and also describes their three-hundred mile walk from Boston to New York.
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Look Up!
Jin-Ho Jung and Mi Hyun Kim
When a girl in a wheelchair calls to people far below to look up and see her, one finds a way to brighten her day.
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Losers Bracket
Chris Crutcher
When it comes to family, Annie is in the losers bracket. While her foster parents are great (mostly), her birth family would not have been her first pick. And no matter how many times Annie tries to write them out of her life, she always gets sucked back into their drama. Love is like that. But when a family argument breaks out at Annie's swim meet and her nephew goes missing, Annie might be the only one who can get him back. With help from her friends, her foster brother, and her social service worker, Annie puts the pieces of the puzzle together, determined to find her nephew and finally get him into a safe home.
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Lost!: A Dog Called Bear
Wendy Orr
When Logan's dog runs away as he and his mother are moving to a new home after his parents separate, a girl named Hannah, who longs for a dog of her own, finds him.
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Lost and Found (Amy Hodgepodge, #3)
Kim Wayans Wayans and Kevin Knotts
When her class goes on a wilderness overnight trip, fourth-grader Amy worries about how she will fare since she has never gone camping.
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Lou Caribou: Weekdays with Mom, Weekends with Dad
Marie-Sabine Roger and David Wilson
A young reindeer lives with his mother and visits his father on weekends. The story of Lou Caribou will help small children come to terms with their own parents' separation. This book shows that parents who live apart still lovingly care for their child, and that their separation has not diminished their love for him.
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Louisiana's Song
Kerry Madden
Set in the Appalachia in 1963, Livy Two has come to terms with the fact that her father is a changed man after being in a coma and so now, along with her eleven-year-old sister, Louisiana, she must find a way to take care of their father and their large mountain family.
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Love and Other Carnivorous Plants
Florence Gonsalves
Freshman year at Harvard was the most anticlimactic year of Danny's life. She's failing pre-med and drifting apart from her best friend. One by one, Danny is losing all the underpinnings of her identity. When she finds herself attracted to an older, edgy girl who she met in rehab for an eating disorder, she finally feels like she might be finding a new sense of self. But when tragedy strikes, her self-destructive tendencies come back to haunt her as she struggles to discover who that self really is.
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Love and Other Four Letter Words
Carolyn Mackler
Sammie never expected sweet sixteen to be perfect, but she didn't expect her parents to separate or to have to move to a tiny apartment in New York. As the hot, hummid summer progresses, she finds new depths to the word "love," and comes to understand other words such as "gain," "loss," and "grow."