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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Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit
Jaye Robin Brown
Joanna Gordon has been out and proud for years, but when her popular radio evangelist father remarries and decides to move all three of them from Atlanta to the more conservative Rome, Georgia, he asks Jo to do the impossible: to lie low for the rest of her senior year. And Jo reluctantly agrees. Although it is (mostly) much easier for Jo to fit in as a straight girl, things get complicated when she meets Mary Carlson, the oh-so-tempting sister of her new friend at school. But Jo couldn't possibly think of breaking her promise to her dad. Even if she's starting to fall for the girl. Even if there's a chance Mary Carlson might be interested in her, too. Right?
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Gertie's Leap to Greatness
Kate Beasley
Gertie is a girl on a mission to be the best fifth grader ever in order to show her estranged mother that Gertie doesn't need her--not one bit!
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Get It Together, Delilah
Erin Gough
Seventeen-year-old Delilah Green is doing her best to deal with a chaotic life--she is running the family cafe, The Flywheel, by herself because her father is on a vacation trying to get over his wife deserting him; she is getting flack at school because she is a lesbian, and one of the "in-girls" has started to come on to her, and she is hopelessly attracted to a girl named Rosa, who dances the flamingo outside the café every evening.
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Gettin' Through Thursday
Melrose Cooper
On Thursdays, the day before payday, spirits are as low as provisions. Thursday is also the day report cards arrive, and Andre is excited and proud of his grades, but he's also worried because Mama has promised a party for any child who makes the honor roll. How will she throw a party when report card day falls on Thursday?
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Ghost
Jason Reynolds
Ghost. Lu. Patina. Sunny. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds with personalities that are explosive when they clash. But they are also four kids chosen for an elite middle school track team -- a team that could qualify them for the Junior Olympics if they can get their acts together. They all have a lot to lose, but they also have a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves. Ghost has a crazy natural talent, but no formal training. If he can stay on track, literally and figuratively, he could be the best sprinter in the city. But Ghost has been running for the wrong reasons -- it all starting with running away from his father, who, when Ghost was a very little boy, chased him and his mother through their apartment, then down the street, with a loaded gun, aiming to kill. Since then, Ghost has been the one causing problems -- and running away from them -- until he meets Coach, an ex-Olympic Medalist who blew his own shot at success by using drugs, and who is determined to keep other kids from blowing their shots at life.
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Ginger Brown: Too Many Houses
Sharon Dennis Wyeth, Cornelius Van Wright, and Ying-Hwa Hu
When her parents get a divorce, six-year-old Ginger lives for a while with each set of grandparents and begins to understand her mixed background and her new family situation.
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Giraffe People
Jill Malone
In the 1990s military brat Cole Peters, daughter of a chaplain, must face the obstacles of figuring out her persona while being bounced between religion and military and multiple transitional homes. She meets Meghan, whose ambition is directed toward West Point. Cole's parent's eyes see the relationship as a good influence for their rebellious daughter...until Cole and Meghan become lovers.
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Girl in Pieces
Kathleen Glasgow
As she struggles to recover and survive, seventeen-year-old homeless Charlotte "Charlie" Davis cuts herself to dull the pain of abandonment and abuse.
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Girl in the Shadows
V. C. Andrews
After the death of her parents, April Taylor flees north to take a job looking after Mrs. Westington's deaf granddaughter, Echo, until the arrival of the girl's mother and her drug-dealing boyfriend puts both girls' lives in deadly danger.
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Girl Out of Water
Laura Silverman
When her aunt gets into a car accident, Anise is forced to leave her friends and surfing behind to spend the summer in Nebraska to help care for her cousins, and by doing so, forms familial bonds and new friendships that challenge her feelings of abandonment by her mother.
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Girls Like Us
Gail Giles
Graduating from their school's special education program, Quincy and Biddy are placed together in their first independent apartment and discover unexpected things they have in common in the face of past challenges and a harrowing trauma.
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Girls of Paper and Fire
Natasha Ngan
When Lei, seventeen, is stolen from her home to become one of nine Paper Girls, the Demon King's concubines, she proves to be more fire than paper.
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Give Me Some Truth
Eric Gansworth
In 1980 life is hard on the Tuscarora Reservation in upstate New York, and most of the teenagers feel like they are going nowhere: Carson Mastick dreams of forming a rock band, and Maggi Bokoni longs to create her own conceptual artwork instead of the traditional beadwork that her family sells to tourists--but tensions are rising between the reservation and the surrounding communities, and somehow in the confusion of politics and growing up Carson and Maggi have to make a place for themselves.
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Glory Be
Augusta Scattergood
In the summer of 1964 as she is about to turn twelve, Glory's town of Hanging Moss, Mississippi, is beset by racial tension when town leaders close her beloved public pool rather than desegregating it.
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God Found Us You
Lisa Tawn Bergren
When Little Fox asks his mother to tell his favorite story, Mama Fox recounts the day he arrived in her life, from God to her arms.
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Golden Boy
Tara Sullivan
Light eyes, yellow hair and white skin-- Habo is an albino, strange and alone. His father, unable to accept Habo, abandons the family. When they are forced from their small Tanzanian village, Habo knows he is to blame. The family seeks refuge with an aunt in Mwanza....
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Goldie Vance, Volume Four
Hope Larson and Jackie Ball
Sixteen-year-old Marigold “Goldie” Vance has an insatiable curiosity and dreams of one day becoming a detective. Luckily for Goldie, with the St. Pascal Rockin’ the Beach Music Festival coming to town, there’s plenty of inexplicable shenanigans keeping her gumshoe brain busy, from mysterious power outages, to missing musicians, to Russian spies hiding in the shadows.
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Goldie Vance, Volume One
Hope Larson
Sixteen-year-old Marigold “Goldie” Vance lives at a Florida resort with her dad, who manages the place. Her mom, who divorced her dad years ago, works as a live mermaid at a club downtown. Goldie has an insatiable curiosity, which explains her dream to one day become the hotel’s in-house detective. When Charles, the current detective, encounters a case he can’t crack, he agrees to mentor Goldie in exchange for her help solving the mystery.
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Goldie Vance, Volume Three
Hope Larson and Jackie Ball
Sixteen-year-old Marigold "Goldie" Vance has an insatiable curiosity. She lives at a Florida resort with her dad, who manages the place, and it's her dream to one day become the hotel's in-house detective. When Sugar, the spoiled daughter of the crossed Palm's owner, come to Goldie with a mystery of her own, Goldie dives headfirst into the world of Prescription 1 racing, jealousy, and sabotage. There may be more to Sugar and her family than meets the eye...even an eye as keen as Goldie's!
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Goldie Vance, Volume Two
Hope Larson
Sixteen-year-old Marigold “Goldie” Vance lives at a Florida resort with her dad, who manages the place. Her mom, who divorced her dad years ago, works as a live mermaid at a club downtown. Goldie has an insatiable curiosity, which explains her dream to one day become the hotel’s in-house detective. For now she has to settle for helping out the current hotel detective, Walter. When a mysterious astronaut washes up on the beach, Goldie and her best friend Cheryl are on the case! Where did she come from? Where was she going? And what does she want with...Cheryl?
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Gone, Gone, Gone
Hannah Moskowitz
Struggling with the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and sniper shootings throughout the Washington, D.C. area, Craig and Lio consider a romantic relationship that is complicated by Craig's ex-boyfriend, Lio's broken family, and the death of Lio's brother.
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Goodbye, Mousie
Robie H. Harris
A boy grieves for his dead pet Mousie, helps to bury him, and begins to come to terms with his loss.
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Goodnight, Boy
Nikki Sheehan
A tale of two very different worlds, both shattered by the loss of loved ones. Tragic, comic and full of hope, thanks to a dog called Boy. The kennel has been JC's home ever since JC s new foster father locked them inside. As the hours and days pass, JC tells Boy about how he came to his country: his family, the orphanage and the Haitian earthquake that swept everything away. How, after, his adoptive mother his foster mother Melanie brought a new light into his life and brought him to her home country. He started to feel normal again. Until JC did something bad, so bad that he and Boy were banished to the kennel. Just before their punishment, just before the kennel. Now their Foster Father is getting sicker, Melody still isn't home, and JC and Boy realize that they have to try and escape.
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Gossamer
Lois Lowry
While learning to bestow dreams, a young dream giver tries to save an eight-year-old boy from the effects of both his abusive past and the nightmares inflicted on him by the frightening Sinisteeds.
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Goyangi Means Cat
Christine McDonnell
An understanding cat helps a young Korean girl adjust to her new home in America.