Direct Diversity | University of Central Florida

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.

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Newsgirl

Liza Ketchum

In the spring of 1851, San Francisco is booming. 12-year-old Amelia Forrester has just arrived with her family and they are eager to make a new life in Phoenix City. But the mostly male town is not that hospitable to females and Amelia decides she will earn more money as a boy. Cutting her hair and donning a cap, she joins a gang of newsboys, selling Eastern newspapers for a fortune.
New Shoes

Susan Lynn Meyer

Set in the South during the time of segregation, this lushly illustrated picture book brings the civil rights era to life for contemporary readers as two young girls find an inventive way to foil Jim Crow laws.When her brother's hand-me-down shoes don't fit, it is time for Ella Mae to get new ones. She is ecstatic, but when she and her mother arrive at Mr. Johnson's shoe store, her happiness quickly turns to dejection. Ella Mae is unable to try on the shoes because of her skin color. Determined to fight back, Ella Mae and her friend Charlotte work tirelessly to collect and restore old shoes, wiping, washing, and polishing them to perfection. The girls then have their very own shoe sale, giving the other African American members of their community a place to buy shoes where they can be treated fairly and "try on all the shoes they want."
Newspaper Hats

Phil Cummings

A little girl, Georgie, visits her grandfather in the nursing home where he is suffering from memory loss, and manages to reconnect with him when they make newspaper hats for everyone.
Nice Wheels

Gwendolyn Hooks

The classmates of a new boy at school find that, although he is in a wheelchair, he can do what they do.
Nico and Tucker

Rachel Gold

The decision can't be put off any longer. A medical crisis turns Nico's body into a battleground, crushing Nico under conflicting family pressures. Having lived genderqueer for years, Nico is used to getting strong reactions (and uninvited opinions!) from everyone, but it is Tucker's reaction that hurts the most. Jess Tucker didn't mean to hurt Nico, but she panicked. And after the worst year of her life, she's hanging on by a thread. Forget recovery time and therapy, she needs to put the past behind her and be normal again. But when her relationship with Nico becomes more than she can handle, she cuts and runs.
Night Hoops

Carl Deuker

While trying to prove that he is good enough to be on his high school's varsity basketball team, Nick must also deal with his parents' divorce and the erratic behavior of a troubled classmate who lives across the street.
Night on Fire

Ronald Kidd

When thirteen-year-old Billie Sims learns that the Freedom Riders, a civil rights group protesting segregation on buses in the summer of 1961, will be traveling through Anniston, Alabama, she thinks change could be coming to her stubborn town. But what starts as angry grumbles soon turns to brutality, and Billie is forced to reconsider her own views.
Nina Bonita: A Story

Ana Maria Machado

Enchanted by Nina Bonita's black skin, a white rabbit determines to find a way to have children as beautiful and black as she is.
Nine Candles

Maria Testa

After visiting his mother in prison on his seventh birthday, Raymond wishes it were his ninth birthday when Mama has promised to be home with his dad and him.
Nini

Francois Thisdale

Long before Nini was born, she was in a safe place where a familiar voice promised her a loving home. But once she was born, that soft voice was replaced by the words of care givers in an orphanage. Though they were kind, Nini missed the soft voice and the promises it made. Then, one day, a man and a woman on the other side of the world learned that their dreams were about to come true. They would finally have a baby to love. When they all met, Nini once again heard a soft voice, as reassuring and as loving as the first, and trusted that the promises had come true. But her first memory was never lost--it remained an echo for her to share with her parents in her new home.
Ninth Ward

Jewell Parker Rhodes

In New Orleans' Ninth Ward, twelve-year-old Lanesha, who can see spirits, and her adopted grandmother have no choice but to stay and weather the storm as Hurricane Katrina bears down upon them.
No and Me

Delphine de Vigan

Parisian teenager Lou has an IQ of 160, OCD tendencies, and a mother who has suffered from depression for years. But Lou is about to change her life-and that of her parents-all because of a school project about homeless teens. While doing research, Lou meets No, a teenage girl living on the streets. As their friendship grows, Lou bravely asks her parents if No can live with them, and is astonished when they agree. No's presence forces Lou's family to come to terms with a secret tragedy. But can this shaky, newfound family continue to live together when No's own past comes back to haunt her?
No Fixed Address

Susin Nielsen

Twelve-year-old Felix's appearance on a television game show reveals that he and his mother have been homeless for a while, but also restores some of his faith in other people.
No Girls Allowed: Tales of Daring Women Dressed as Men for Love, Freedom, and Adventure

Susan Hughes

Based on legends, poems, letters and first-hand accounts, these seven biographical tales tell of women who disguised themselves as men. From ancient Egypt to the 19th century, this historically accurate graphic treatment transports readers to bygone eras. For the sake of freedom, ambition, love or adventure, these women risked everything.
None of the Above

I.W. Gregorio

A groundbreaking story about a teenage girl who discovers she's intersex...and what happens when her secret is revealed to the entire school. Incredibly compelling and sensitively told, None of the Above is a thought-provoking novel that explores what it means to be a boy, a girl, or something in between.
No Ordinary Family

Ute Krause and Nicholas Miller

When seven little bandits suddenly have to share their dad’s time with a Princess and her six little princes and princesses—it’s a royal mess. “When are they leaving?” “Oh, they’re staying, my dear,” said their dad. And stay they did. But when the little bandits devise a plan to make them leave, they soon discover that it’s royally boring without them… It’s patchwork times three in Ute Krause’s new delightful offering—for when their mom meets a dragon…the bandits and the royals alike are never the same again (and they couldn’t be happier for it!)
No Place

Todd Strasser

Rendered homeless by circumstances beyond his family's control, Dan is forced to move to Tent City, where he begins fighting for better conditions only to be targeted by an adversary who wants to destroy the impoverished region.
Nora & Kettle (Paper Starts #1)

Lauren Nicolle Taylor

Set in 1953, Nora & Kettle explores the collision of two teenagers facing extraordinary adversity. Kettle, an orphaned Japanese American, is struggling to make a life in the aftermath of an event in history not often referred to--the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the removal of children from orphanages for having "one drop of Japanese blood in them." Nora, the daughter of a civil rights lawyer who is building a compensation case for the interned Japanese Americans, is barely surviving her violent home and dreams of a life outside of the brownstone walls. Their meeting is inevitable, devastating and ultimately healing.
Nora's Ark

Natalie Kinsey-Warnock

This heartwarming story by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock is based on a real-life event: the Vermont Flood of 1927. Watercolors by Caldecott Medal-winning artist Emily Arnold McCully capture both the sweeping drama of the flood and the comfort of a cozy kitchen filled with friends, neighbors, and good cheer.
Nora's Chicks

Patricia Maclachlan

Nora and her family have just arrived from Russia and are making a new home on the American frontier. The prairie is very different from the forested hills Nora is used to. Most of all, it’s lonely. Papa has the cows he sings to as he milks them. Baby brother Milo has a dog to follow him wherever he goes. But Nora has no one and nothing to call her own until Papa brings home a dozen chicks and two geese. Nora names each one, and they follow her everywhere — even to church! But what will happen when one of her beloved chicks goes missing?
No Small Thing

Natale Ghent

Then twelve-year-old Nathaniel and his two sisters, Cid and Queenie, discover an ad for a free pony in the paper, they can hardly believe their luck. The pony is theirs, as long as they can afford to take care of it. But what will their mother say? Nat knows things are hard for his mom; his dad walked out on them four years ago. But having a pony would help Nat and Cid stop bickering and it would mean so much to Queenie. When Nat's mother lets them keep it, life is still not easy, but at the end of each day, Nat knows his pony is waiting from him. Until a fire destroys the barn.
Not All Princesses Dress in Pink

Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple

Rhyming text affirms that girls can pursue their many interests, from playing sports to planting flowers in the dirt, without giving up their tiaras.
Notes from the Blender

Trish Cook and Brendan Halpin

Two teenagers -- a heavy-metal-music-loving boy who is still mourning the death of his mother years earlier, and a beautiful, popular girl whose parents divorced because her father is gay -- try to negotiate the complications of family and peer relationships as they get to know each other after learning that their father and mother are marrying each other.
Notes on a Near-Life Experience

Olivia Birdsall

Mia never thought she'd be the child of a broken home. Yet when she's 15 years old, one day her father just up and moves out. As her family life crumbles, her love life is finally coming together. Julian, her brother Allen's best friend and her longtime crush, has finally noticed her—and being with Julian makes her happier than she can put into words. Meanwhile, her mother has disappeared into work, her brother is skipping school and acting weird, and her father is cohabitating with a frighteningly sexy Peruvian woman named Paloma. Mia wishes the divorce would just go away so she could focus on Julian...but she can't ignore her problems forever. In this honest, witty, utterly accessible winner of the Delacorte Press Contest, first-time author Olivia Birdsall creates an authentic and lovable teenager in Mia.
Nothing Happened

Molly Booth

Modern-day retelling of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing taking place at an idyllic summer camp where the counselors have to cope with simmering drama.