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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What Can You Do with Two Mommies?

Tara Theresa Hill

Annie is a little girl growing up in a house with two Mommies and a big, orange cat named Pumpkin. Annie has always had two Mommies. But when Annie's new best friend, Emily, starts asking why she doesn't have a Daddy, Annie starts wondering if her parents are different from other kids' parents. As Annie talks to Emily about her life with Mommy Susan and Mommy Sharon, they both discover that in the end, it is love that makes a family.
What Comes After

Steve Watkins

When her veterinarian father dies, sixteen-year-old Iris Wight must move from Maine to North Carolina where her Aunt Sue spends Iris's small inheritance while abusing her physically and emotionally, but the hardest to take is her mistreatment of the farm animals.
What Do I Say About That?

Julia Cook

This book takes a unique look at the internal struggles with which a child of an incarcerated parent is faced.
Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?

Kathleen Collins

Now available in Ecco's Art of the Story series: a never-before-published collection of stories from a brilliant yet little known African American artist and filmmaker-a contemporary of revered writers including Toni Cade Bambara, Laurie Colwin, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Grace Paley-whose prescient work has recently resurfaced to wide acclaim. Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins's stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues-race, gender, family, and sexuality-that shape the ordinary moments in our lives. In "The Uncle," a young girl who idolizes her handsome uncle and his beautiful wife makes a haunting discovery about their lives. In "Only Once," a woman reminisces about her charming daredevil of a lover and his ultimate-and final-act of foolishness. Collins's work seamlessly integrates the African-American experience in her characters' lives, creating rich, devastatingly familiar, full-bodied men, women, and children who transcend the symbolic, penetrating both the reader's head and heart. Both contemporary and timeless, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love' is a major addition to the literary canon, and is sure to earn Kathleen Collins the widespread recognition she is long overdue.
What Happened to Goodbye

Sarah Dessen

Following her parents' bitter divorce as she and her father move from town to town, seventeen-year-old Mclean reinvents herself at each school she attends until she is no longer sure she knows who she is or where she belongs.
What Hearts

Bruce Brooks

After his mother divorces his father and remarries, Asa's sharp intellect and capacity for forgiveness help him deal with the instabilities of his new world.
What If It's Us

Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

Told in two voices, when Arthur, a summer intern from Georgia, and Ben, a native New Yorker, meet it seems like fate, but after three attempts at dating fail they wonder if the universe is pushing them together or apart.
What is Jail, Mommy?

Jackie A. Stanglin

A mother explains to her young daughter why the girl's father is in prison and what his life is like as an inmate.
What is Real

Karen Rivers

Dex Pratt's life has been turned upside down: his parents have divorced, his mother has remarried, and his father attempts suicide and fails. Dex returns to their small town to care for him. However, he isn't prepared for his father's grow-op or his rotting rented house.
What is Sign Language?

Deborah Kent

Explains the history of American Sign Language (ASL) and shares the story of Beanca, a girl who was born deaf and uses ASL to communicate.
What Jaime Saw

Carolyn Coman

Having fled to a family friend's hillside trailer after his mother's boyfriend tried to throw his baby sister against a wall, nine-year-old Jamie finds himself living an existence full of uncertainty and fear.
What Momma Left Me

Renée Watson

After the death of their mother, thirteen-year-old Serenity Evans and her younger brother go to live with their grandparents, who try to keep them safe from bad influences and help them come to terms with what has happened to their family. Includes recipe for red velvet cake.
What's a Foster Family, Anyway?

Martine Golden Inlay and Jodi Jensen

This book provides a much needed resource in helping children cope with placement into foster care.
What She Left Behind

Tracy Bilen

Sixteen-year-old Sara's mother goes missing before she and Sara can move to a new town to escape Sara's physically abusive father.
What's Wrong with Timmy?

Maria Shriver

Making friends with a mentally retarded boy helps Kate learn that the two of them have a lot in common.
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.
What to Expect When Your Family Becomes a Foster Family

Cindy Unruh

Foster parenting can change your life, as well as the lives of others. It's a great opportunity for your family to learn about love, sacrifice, and relationships. This book will help younger children begin to understand how their family will change when strangers come to live in their home.
What Will Happen to Me?

Howard Zehr and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz

Pairs portraits of children whose parents are incarcerated with the reflections of grandparents who are caring for them and includes resources for caregivers and advice on dealing with the unique emotions of these children.
What Would Joey Do?

Jack Gantos

Joey's dad just roared into town on a motorcycle, his mom is chasing her ex-husband away with a broomstick, and his grandma's camped out on the couch behind a plastic shower curtain. What's more, Joey's chihuahua has been dognapped, and his mom insists that he be homeschooled with a mean blind girl and her super-religious mother. Welcome to Joey's world. With his new self-assumed role as "Mr. Helpful," Joey's on a mission to make everything and everyone better. Can Joey accomplish all this or will his wild, wired behavior spin him out of control all over again?
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.
When Andy's Father Went to Prison

Martha Whitmore Hickman

When Andy's father is sent to prison for robbery and the family moves to be near him, Andy is afraid of what the kids at his new school will think.
When Charley Met Emma

Amy Webb

Five-year-old Charley gets teased for daydreaming and drawing more than his friends, but when he meets Emma, who is physically different, he needs help remembering that being different is okay.
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.
When Dad Killed Mom

Julius Lester

When Jenna and Jeremey's father kills their artistic mother, they struggle to slowly rebuild a functioning family.
When Dad Was Away

Karen Littlewood

When Milly's dad is sent to prison, she feels angry and confused. She can't believe her dad won't be at home to read her stories. But soon Mum takes Milly and her brother Sam to visit Dad in prison, and a week later a special package arrives at home - a CD of Milly's favourite animal stories, read especially for her by Dad.