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 Health & Disability:
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When Molly Was in the Hospital
Debbie Duncan
Anna's little sister, Molly, has been very ill and had to have an operation. Anna tells us all about the experience from her point of view.
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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 Johnny Doesn't Flap: NT is OK!
Clay Morton and Gail Morton
Johnny is different. He is never exactly on time, he can't seem to stick to a routine and he often speaks in cryptic idioms. Johnny is neurotypical, but that's OK.
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Wild Blues
Beth Kephart
Thirteen-year-old Lizzie relates, through a victim statement, her harrowing journey through the Adirondacks seeking her disabled friend, Matias, who was kidnapped by escaped convicts.
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Willful Machines
Tim Floreen
In a near-future America, a sentient computer program named Charlotte has turned terrorist, but Lee Fisher, the closeted son of an ultraconservative President, is more concerned with keeping his Secret Service detail from finding out about his developing romance with Nico, the new guy at school. But when the spider-like robots that roam the school halls begin acting even stranger than usual, Lee realizes he is Charlotte's next target.
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Willow King
Chris Platt
Thirteen-year-old Katie, who is herself physically challenged, saves a crippled foal from euthanasia and nurses him back to health and eventual championships.
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Willow King: Race the Wind
Chris Platt
Determined to ride her horse in the Kentucky Derby despite her physical handicap, Katie overcomes great obstacles and even helps a blind girl face her own kind of challenge.
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Wintering Well
Lea Wait
Twelve-year-old Will Ames and his sister Cassie go to stay with their sister in nearby Wiscasset, Maine, after a disabling accident ruins Will's plans for a career in farming.
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Wired Man and Other Freaks of Nature
Sashi Kaufman
Ben has to wear hearing aids, but being inseparable from the super-popular Tyler allows him to think of himself as normal. But Tyler blows him off senior year and Ben needs to rethink who he is--and who Tyler is.
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With or Without You
Brian Farrey
When eighteen-year-old best friends Evan and Davis of Madison, Wisconsin, join a community center group called "chasers" to gain acceptance and knowledge of gay history, there may be fatal consequences.
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Wonder
R. J. Palacio
Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student.
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Words on Bathroom Walls
Julia Walton
Adam has just been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He sees and hears people who aren't there: Rebecca, a beautiful girl who understands him; the Mob Boss, who harasses him; and Jason, the naked guy whos unfailingly polite. It should be easy to separate the real from the not real, but Adam can't. Still, theres hope. As Adam starts fresh at a new school, he begins a drug trial that helps him ignore his visions. Suddenly everything seems possible, even love. When he meets Maya, a fiercely intelligent girl, he desperately wants to be the great guy that she thinks he is. But then the miracle drug begins to fail, and Adam will do anything to keep Maya from discovering his secret.
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Yes I Can!: A Girl and Her Wheelchair
Kendra J. Barrett, Jacqueline B. Toner, and Claire A. B. Freeland
Carolyn is in a wheelchair, but she doesn't let that stop her! She can do almost everything the other kids can, even if sometimes she has to do it a little differently.
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You're Welcome, Universe
Whitney Gardner
When Julia finds a slur about her best friend scrawled across the back of the Kingston School for the Deaf, she covers it up with a beautiful (albeit illegal) graffiti mural. Her supposed best friend snitches, the principal expels her, and her two mothers set Julia up with a one-way ticket to a "mainstream" school in the suburbs, where she's treated like an outcast as the only deaf student. The last thing she has left is her art, and not even Banksy himself could convince her to give that up. Out in the 'burbs, Julia paints anywhere she can, eager to claim some turf of her own. But Julia soon learns that she might not be the only vandal in town. Someone is adding to her tags, making them better, showing off--and showing Julia up in the process. She expected her art might get painted over by cops. But she never imagined getting dragged into a full-blown graffiti war.
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Yuko-chan and the Daruma Doll: The Adventures of a Blind Japanese Girl Who Saves Her Village
Sunny Seki
After the 1783 eruption of Japan's Mount Asama destroys crops in nearby villages, an orphaned blind girl who lives at the Daruma Temple in Takasaki invents a doll representing a famed Buddhist monk and his teachings about resilience.
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Zoom!
Robert Munsch
When Lauretta tries out a 92-speed, silver and gold, dirt-bike wheelchair, she gets a speeding ticket but also helps out her brother.