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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Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts)
L. C. Rosen
An unapologetically sexually active queer character works to uncover a blackmailer threatening him back into the closet--
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Jakeman
Deborah Ellis
Jake and his older sister, Shoshonna, along with a busload of kids, visit their mother in prison regularly. But this time the journey turns into a series of misadventures, and the kids find themselves on their own, hatching a plan to find the Governor and plead with him to pardon their moms.
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Jazz Owls: A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
Margarita Engle
Thousands of Navy sailors are pouring into Los Angeles on their way to the front lines of World War II. They are young, scared, and longing to feel alive before they have to face the horrors of battle. Hot jazz music spiced with cool salsa rhythms calls them to dance with the local Mexican American girls, who jitterbug all night before working all day in the canneries. Proud to do their part for the war effort, these Jazz Owl girls dance with the sailors until the blazing summer night when racial violence leads to murder. Suddenly the restless white sailors are attacking the girls' brothers and boyfriends. The cool, loose zoot suits they wear are supposedly the reason for the violence - but really these boys are viciously beaten and arrested simply because of the color of their skin.
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Jazzy's Quest: Adopted and Amazing!
Carrie Goldman and Juliet C. Bond
What makes you amazing? That's what adoptee Jazzy Armstrong has to figure out before the big community talent show. Is she musical like her parents and sisters? Can she make dazzling flower arrangements like her birth mother, score goals on the soccer field like her birth brother, or is there something unique about Jazzy that is nothing like her families? Join Jazzy on her quest to discover just what makes her amazing!
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Jesus Land: A Memoir
Julia Scheeres
It's the mid-1980s. Julia Scheeres and her adopted brother David are sixteen years old and have just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees and trailer parks, and a racism neither of them is prepared for. While Julia is white, her close relationship with David, who is black, makes them both outcasts. At home, a distant mother, more involved with her church's missionaries than with her own children, and a violent father only compound their problems. When high-school hormones, bullying, and a deep-seated restlessness prove too much to bear, they are packed off to a Christian boot camp in the Dominican Republic. Surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribe is governed by a disciplinary regime that demands its teens repent for their sins, which few of them are aware they've committed. How they made it through with heart and soul intact is told here with candor and humor.
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Jimi & Me
Jaime Adolf
After his father's tragic death, twelve-year-old Keith James moves from Brooklyn to a small midwestern town where his mixed race heritage is not accepted, but he finds comfort in the music of Jimi Hendrix and the friendship of a white classmate.
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Jing's Family (All Kinds of Families)
Elliot Riley
There are many types of families. Meet Jing and her family and learn about what adoption means.
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Jin Woo
Eve Bunting
Davey is dubious about having a new adopted brother from Korea, but when he finds out that his parents still love him, he decides that having a baby brother will be fine.
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Josh and Jaz Have Three Mums
Hedi Argent
This brightly illustrated book for young children helps to explain the diversity and 'difference' of family groups and encourages an understanding and appreciation of same sex parents. Josh and Jaz Have Three Mums will be particularly useful for social workers, child care professionals, carers and adoptive parents when exploring the diversity of modern family life with young children. One of the rare children's books to explore and discuss adoption by same sex parents.
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Journey
Patricia MacLachlan
Left by their mother with their grandparents, two children feel as if their past has been erased until Grandfather finds a way to restore it to them.
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Journey Home
Lawrence McKay, Jr.
Mai returns to Vietnam, the land of her mother's birth, to discover both a new country and something about herself.
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Joy of Apex
Napatsi Folger
Joy is ten years old, living in Apex, Nunavut - a suburb of Iqaluit. Her perfect life is shattered by her parent's separation.
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Juana and Lucas: Big Problemas
Juana Medina
Juana's life is just about perfect. She lives in the beautiful city of Bogotaa with her two most favorite people in the world: her mami and her dog, Lucas. Lately, though, things have become a little less perfect. Mami has a new hairdo and a new amigo named Luis with whom she has been spending a LOT of time. He is kind and teaches Juana about things like photography and jazz music, but sometimes Juana can't help wishing things would go back to the way they were before. When Mami announces that she and Luis are getting married and that they will all be moving to a new casa, Juana is quite distraught. Lucky for her, though, some things will never change -- like how much Mami loves her.
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Jubilee
Patricia Reilly Giff
Judith stopped talking long ago when Mom left her in the care of beloved Aunt Cora. Going back into a regular fifth-grade classroom won't be easy, but she has her Dog and new friend who will help her through.
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Julián is a Mermaid
Jessica Love
While riding the subway home from the pool with his abuela one day, Julián notices three women spectacularly dressed up. Their hair billows in brilliant hues, their dresses end in fishtails, and their joy fills the train car. When Julián gets home, daydreaming of the magic he's seen, all he can think about is dressing up just like the ladies in his own fabulous mermaid costume: a butter-yellow curtain for his tail, the fronds of a potted fern for his headdress. But what will Abuela think about the mess he makes -- and even more importantly, what will she think about how Julián sees himself?
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Jumpstart the World
Catherine Ryan Hyde
Sixteen-year-old Elle falls in love with Frank, the neighbor who helps her adjust to being on her own in a big city, but learning that he is transgendered turns her world upside-down.
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Just Add One Chinese Sister: An Adoption Story
Patricia McMahon and Conor Clarke McCarthy
Claire and her mother are working together on a scrapbook as they relive their first days and hours together following Claire's arrival from her birth home in China.
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Just a Girl
Carrie Mesrobian
Senior Rianne Hettrick-Wynne has had her share of hookups and parties in small-town Wereford, Minnesota. Now volleyball season is over and her once-solid friendships are unraveling, while an all-of-a-sudden relationship with Luke Pinsky is weirdly becoming serious. Add to that the possibility of getting kicked out of her house, and Rianne is desperate to make a plan that doesn't include going to college or working at Planet Tan for the rest of her life. At the same time, her divorced parents have started cohabiting again without any explanation, making Rianne wonder why they're so intent on pointing out every bad choice she makes when they can't even act like adults. That's not the only question she can't answer: How is it that Sergei, a broken-English-speaking Russian who makes his own vodka, is the only one who seems to understand her? And why, when she has Luke, the most unattainable boy in Wereford, all to herself, does she want anything but? Perhaps most confounding is the "easy girl" reputation that Rianne has gotten stuck with by doing the same things that guys do without judgment or consequence. If they're just being guys, then why can't Rianne just be a girl?
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Just for Now: Kids and the People of the Court
Kimberly Morris and Kathleen Burke
When Gilbert and his big sister Rachel go into foster care they meet a lot of adults who are there to help them--a caseworker, foster parents, foster brothers and sisters, a lawyer, a therapist, a judge, their own court appointed special advocate (CASA), and a dog named Spud. Explains the roles of various people in the court system.
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Kele's Secret
Tololwa Marti Mollel
Eggs mark the spot - the secret spot where Kele the chicken has been laying. Light hearted game of detective in this account of a boy's adventure on his grandmother's coffee farm in Tanzania.
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Keurium
Jessica Sun Lee
Shay Stone lies in a hospital bed, catatonic -- dead to the world. Her family thinks it's a ploy for attention. Doctors believe it's the result of an undisclosed trauma. At the mercy of memories and visitations, Shay unearths secrets that may have led to her collapse. Will she remain paralyzed in denial? Or can she accept the unfathomable and break free?
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Kicked Out
Sassafras Lowrey
This volume is collection of essays written by young people who were kicked out of their homes as minors for identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), as well as a few policy essays from service providers. Diverse contributors ranging in age, experience, and current living situation share stories of perseverance and abuse with poignant accounts of survival. The editors point out that very few urban areas have recognized the need to serve dispossessed LGBT youth by establishing shelters or safe houses; money is tight and public support is often hard to muster. They feel that homelessness of these kids is but a symptom of a larger and more pervasive cultural problem: we are a society that does not value all people, and somehow there seems to be a tacit belief that parents of LGBT youth are entitled to abdicate their responsibility to love and protect the children they have created. They feel that such a mindset is due to a homophobic and transphobic culture. This anthology intends to present the points-of-view of the voiceless and also to challenge the stereotypical face of homelessness.
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Kids are Important: A Book for Young Children in Foster Care
Julie Nelson
Explains to children some of the reasons why a child ends up in foster care.
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Kids Need to be Safe: A Book for Children in Foster Care
Julie Nelson
Explains that all children are important and need safe places to live and play, and describes what foster parents do and how foster children may feel when placed in a foster home.
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Kids of Appetite
David Arnold
Teens Victor Benucci and Madeline Falco sit in separate police interrogation rooms telling about the misfits who brought them together and their journey sparked by a message in an urn.