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 Family Relationship:
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1001 Cranes
Naomi Hirahara
With her parents on the verge of separating, a devastated twelve-year-old Japanese American girl spends the summer in Los Angeles with her grandparents, where she folds paper cranes into wedding displays, becomes involved with a young skateboarder, and learns how complicated relationships can be.
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13
Jason Robert Brown and Dan Elish
Almost thirteen-year-old Evan Goldman learns what it means to be a man when his parents separate and he and his mother move from New York City to Appleton, Indiana, right before his bar mitzvah.
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37 Things I Love (In No Particular Order)
Kekla Magoon
Fifteen-year-old Ellis recalls her favorite things as her mother's desire to turn off the machines that have kept Ellis's father alive for two years fill the last four days of her sophomore year with major changes in herself and her relationships.
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42 Miles
Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
As her thirteenth birthday approaches, JoEllen decides to bring together her two separate lives--one as Joey, who enjoys weekends with her father and other relatives on a farm, and another as Ellen, who lives with her mother in a Cincinnati apartment near her school and friends.
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Abby
Jeannette Franklin Caines
An adopted African American preschooler enjoys hearing about the day she became part of her warm, loving family.
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ABC, Adoption & Me
Gayle H. Swift and Casey Anne Swift
A book about adoption that celebrates the miracle of family and addresses the difficult issues as well. With charming, exuberant illustrations and a diverse representation of families, ABC, Adoption & Me will warm hearts, deepen understanding of what it means to be an adoptive family and provide teaching moments that bring families closer, connected in truth, compassion, and joy.
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A Boy No More
Harry Mazer
After his father is killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Adam, his mother, and sister are evacuated from Hawaii to California, where he must deal with his feelings about the war, Japanese internment camps, his father, and his own identity.
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A Brief History of Montmaray
Michelle Cooper
Sophie Fitzosborne lives in a crumbling castle in the tiny island kingdom of Montmaray with her eccentric and impoverished royal family. When she receives a journal for her sixteenth birthday, Sophie decides to chronicle day-to-day life on the island. But this is 1936, and the news that trickles in from the mainland reveals a world on the brink of war. The politics of Europe seem far away from their remote island—until two German officers land a boat on Montmaray. And then suddenly politics become very personal indeed.
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A Card for My Father
Samantha Thornhill
A Card For My Father by Samantha Thornhill with illustrations by Morgan Clement is the first title in a trilogy of picture books exploring the lasting effects, big and small, of a father’s incarceration on his first-grade daughter, Flora. In A Card For My Father, how can Flora complete her class assignment to write a Father’s Day card when she’s never met her father?
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A Chair for My Mother
Vera B. Williams
A child, her waitress mother, and her grandmother save dimes to buy a comfortable armchair after all their furniture is lost in a fire.
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A Clear Spring
Barbara Sjoholm
While visiting relatives in Seattle, twelve-year-old Willa explores the ethnic diversity of her family and investigates the pollution of a salmon stream.
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Adaptation
Malinda Lo
Flocks of birds are hurling themselves at aeroplanes across America. Thousands of people die. On Reese's long drive home, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won't tell them what happened. For Reese, though, this is just the start. She can't remember anything from the time between her accident and the day she woke up almost a month later. She only knows one thing: she's different now. Torn between longtime crush David and new girl Amber, the real question is: who can she trust?
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A Day's Work
Eve Bunting
When Francisco, a young Mexican American boy, tries to help his grandfather find work, he discovers that even though the old man cannot speak English, he has something even more valuable to teach Francisco.
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A Different Home: A New Foster Child's Story
John DeGarmo and Kelly DeGarmo
When Jessie is placed in foster care, she finds it difficult at first but slowly begins to like her new home. First person recount. Story is designed to help children aged 4-10 to settle into care. Includes notes for foster parents.
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A Different Pond
Bao Phi
As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. Between hope-filled casts, Bao's father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam.
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Adopted like Me: My Book of Adopted Heroes
Ann Angel
Adopted Like Me is a children's picture book that tells the stories of famous and inspirational people, all of whom were adopted. Read about great musicians like Bo Diddley, politicians like Nelson Mandela, stars like Marilyn Monroe as well as inventors, athletes, a princess skilled in judo and fencing, and many more.
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Adopted: The Ultimate Teen Guide
Suzanne Slade
Provides a resource for adopted teens who struggle with questions of identity, the search for and meeting with birth parents, and adoption by those of a different race or country, and offers advice and anecdotes from adopted teens.
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Adoption
Laurie Willis
Collection of eleven essays pertaining to the topic of adoption, covering open adoption, transracial adoptions, challenging same-sex couples the right to adopt, and other related topics.
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Adoption and Foster Care
Kathlyn Gay
Describes how these placement systems work and reveals the feelings of young people who find homes through adoption and foster care.
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Adoption is for Always
Linda Walvoord and Judith Friedman
Although Celia reacts to having been adopted with anger and insecurity, her parents help her accept her feelings and celebrate their love for her by making her adoption day a family holiday. Includes factual information about the adoption process.
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Adoption Stories for Young Children
Randall B. Hicks
Explaining in very simple terms why some parents cannot care for their children, and would choose to place them for adoption, this helpful collection of case studies also shows photographs of real adoptive parents who cannot bear children of their own, and introduces the idea that adults have often been adopted, too.
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A Family for Jamie: An Adoption Story
Suzanne Bloom
Although Dan and Molly can make cookies and birdhouses, they cannot make a baby, so they adopt Jamie and share with him their life and love.
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A Family is a Family is a Family
Sara O'Leary
When a teacher asks the children in her class to think about what makes their families special, the answers are all different in many ways -- but the same in the one way that matters most of all. One child is worried that her family is just too different to explain, but listens as her classmates talk about what makes their families special. One is raised by a grandmother, and another has two dads. One is full of stepsiblings, and another has a new baby.
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A Father Like That
Charlotte Zolotow
A young boy shares with his mother his daydreams about the father who left before he was born.
