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.

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As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl

John Colapinto

In 1967, after a baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment. On the advice of a renowned expert in gender identity and sexual reassignment, the boy was surgically altered to live as a girl. This book is the human drama of one man's - and one family's - amazing survival in the face of odds.
A Time of Fire

Robert Westall

In England during World War II, with his mother dead from a German bomb and his father off in training and action but keeping him informed by letter, Sonny tries to understand the darkest truths of war and retribution.
A Time to Dance

Padma Venkatraman

In India, a girl who excels at Bharatanatyam dance refuses to give up after losing a leg in an accident.
Bait

Alex Sanchez

Diego keeps getting into trouble because of his explosive temper until he finally finds a probation officer who helps him get to the root of his anger so that he can stop running from his past.
Ball Don't Lie

Matt De La Pena

Sticky is a beat-around-the-head foster kid with nowhere to call home but the street, and an outer shell so tough that no one will take him in. He started out life so far behind the pack that the finish line seems nearly unreachable. He’s a white boy living and playing in a world where he doesn’t seem to belong. But Sticky can ball. And basketball might just be his ticket out . . . if he can only realize that he doesn’t have to be the person everyone else expects him to be.
Beast

Brie Spangler

After falling off the roof, fifteen-year-old misfit Dylan must attend a therapy group for self-harmers where he meets Jamie, a beautiful and amazing person he does not know is transgender.
Beginnings: How Families Come to Be

Virginia Kroll

Parents and children discuss how their families came to be, covering birth families, adoptive families, two-parent families, and single parent families.
Behind You

Jacqueline Woodson

After fifteen-year-old Jeremiah is mistakenly shot by police, the people who love him struggle to cope with their loss as they recall his life and death, unaware that 'Miah is watching over them.
Belle Prater's Boy

Ruth White

When Woodrow's mother suddenly disappears, he moves to his grandparents' home in a small Virginia town where he befriends his cousin and together they find the strength to face the terrible losses and fears in their lives. Everyone in Coal Station, Virginia, has a theory about what happened to Belle Prater, but twelve-year-old Gypsy wants the facts, and when her cousin Woodrow, Aunt Belle's son moves next door, she has her chance.
Betty Before X

Ilyasah Shabazz and Renée Watson

Raised by her aunt until she is six, Betty, who will later marry Malcolm X, joins her mother and stepfamily in 1940s Detroit, where she learns about the civil rights movement.
Between Us Baxters

Bethany Hegedus

The story of twelve-year-old Polly, a poor white Southern girl whose close friendship with Timbre Ann, a middle-class black teen, puts both families in danger. As white supremacists set fire to black businesses, Polly struggles to cope with the implications for her family and to understand the true meaning of friendship. Polly's sense of justice threatens to upset the status quo in her small town.
Billy Had to Move: A Foster Care Story

Theresa Ann Fraser

Child Protection Services have been involved with Billy and his mother for some time now. He has been happily settled in a kinship placement with his grandmother and enjoys his pet cat, interacting with neighbors and even taking piano lessons. As the story unfolds, Billy's grandmother has unexpectedly passed away and so the story of Billy Had To Move begins. Unfortunately, Billy's mother cannot be located. Mr. Murphy, Billy's social worker, places him in the foster home of Amy, Tim, and their baby "Colly." Billy experiences great loss resulting not only from his grandmother's death, but also the loss of the life he knew. Billy's inner journey therefore has also begun and with the help of Ms. Woods, a Play Therapist, there is hope.
Bird

Zetta Elliott

Young Mekhai, better known as Bird, loves to draw. With drawings, he can erase the things that don't turn out right. In real life, problems aren’t so easily fixed. As Bird struggles to understand the death of his beloved grandfather and his older brother’s drug addiction, he escapes into his art. Drawing is an outlet for Bird’s emotions and imagination, and provides a path to making sense of his world. In time, with the help of his grandfather’s friend, Bird finds his own special somethin’ and wings to fly. Told with spare grace, Bird is a touching look at a young boy coping with real-life troubles. Readers will be heartened by Bird’s quiet resilience, and moved by the healing power of putting pencil to paper.
Bird Lake Moon

Kevin Henkes

Twelve-year-old Mitch and his mother are spending the summer with his grandparents at Bird Lake after his parents separate, and ten-year-old Spencer and his family have returned to the lake where Spencer's little brother drowned long ago, and as the boys become friends and spend time together, each of them begins to heal.
Blackberry Stew

Isabell Monk

When her Grandpa Jack dies, Hope remembers the time she went with him to pick blackberries, and she realizes that he will continue to live in her and in her memories.
Bloodline

Joe Jimenez

Seventeen-year-old Abraham is in love, but his girlfriend and the grandmother who raised him are worried about his fighting, and things only get worse when his uncle introduces him to boxing.
Blood Water Paint

Joy McCullough

In Renaissance Italy, Artemisia Gentileschi endures the subjugation of women that allows her father to take credit for her extraordinary paintings, rape and the ensuing trial, and torture, buoyed by her deceased mother's stories of strong women of the Bible.
Boats for Papa

Jessixa Bagley

Buckley and his Mama live in a cozy cabin by the ocean. He loves to carve boats out of the driftwood he finds on the beach nearby. He makes: big boats long boats short boats and tall boats, each one more beautiful than the last, and sends them out to sea. If they don't come back, he knows they've found their way to his papa, whom he misses very much.
Born Both: An Intersex Life

Hida Viloria

From Hida Viloria, writer and intersex activist, a candid, provocative, and eye-opening memoir of life, love, and gender identity as an intact intersex person, as well as a call to action for justice for intersex people. Hida Viloria was raised as a girl but discovered early on that he/r body was different. Unlike most people who are born intersex in the first world--meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female--Hida had the freedom to explore the person s/he was born to be because he/r parents did not agree to have he/r sex characteristics surgically altered at birth. It wasn't until s/he was 26 and encountered the term "intersex" in a San Francisco newspaper that s/he finally had a name for he/r difference. That's when s/he began to explore what it means to live in the space between genders--to be both and neither. As s/he began to reach out to others like he/r, however, Hida discovered that most intersex people had been scarred, both physically and psychologically, by infant surgeries and hormone treatments meant to "correct" their bodies. Eager to help end this practice, Hida came out as intersex at a national and then international level. By answering the question "Are you a boy or a girl?" with "I'm both," Hida's helped blaze a trail for people--particularly intersex and genderqueer/non-binary people--to celebrate the middle space where male and female are not separate and opposite but entwined. Born Both is an intimate and powerful account of Hida's search for authentic identity and love in a world that insists on categorizing people into either/or.
Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It

Sundee Tucker Frazier

Brendan Buckley, a biracial ten-year-old, applies his scientific problem-solving ability and newfound interest in rocks and minerals to connect with his white grandfather, the president of Puyallup Rock Club, and to learn why he and Brendan's mother are estranged.
Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan

Mary Williams and R. Gregory Christie

Eight-year-old Garang is tending cattle far from his family's home in southern Sudan when war comes to his village. Frightened but unharmed, he returns to find everything has been destroyed. Soon Garang meets other boys whose villages have been attacked. Before long they become a moving band of thousands, walking hundreds of miles seeking safety — first in Ethiopia and then in Kenya. The boys face numerous hardships and dangers along the way, but their faith and mutual support help keep the hope of finding a new home alive in their hearts. Based on heartbreaking yet inspirational true events in the lives of the Lost Boys of Sudan, Brothers in Hope is a story of remarkable and enduring courage, and an amazing testament to the unyielding power of the human spirit.
Calling the Water Drum

LaTisha Redding

A young boy loses both parents as they attempt to flee Haiti for a better life, and afterward is only able to process his grief and communicate with the outside world through playing the drums.
Caterpillar Summer

Gillian McDunn

Since her father's death, Cat has taken care of her brother, Chicken, for their hardworking mother but while spending time with grandparents they never knew, Cat has the chance to be a child again.
Cemetery Boys

Aiden Thomas

Yadriel, a trans boy, summons the angry spirit of his high school's bad boy, and agrees to help him learn how he died, thereby proving himself a brujo, not a bruja, to his conservative family.
Children of Blood and Bone

Tomi Adeyemi

Seventeen-year-old Zélie, her older brother Tzain, and rogue princess Amari fight to restore magic to the land and activate a new generation of magi, but they are ruthlessly pursued by the crown prince, who believes the return of magic will mean the end of the monarchy.