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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Like Magic
Elaine Vickers
For three ten-year-old girls, their once simple worlds are starting to feel too big. Painfully shy Grace dreads starting fifth grade now that her best friend has moved away. Jada hopes she'll stop feeling so alone if she finds the mother who left years ago. And Malia fears the arrival of her new baby sister will forever change the family she loves. When the girls each find a mysterious treasure box in their library and begin to fill the box with their own precious things, they start to feel less alone. But it's up to Grace, Jada, and Malia to take the treasures and turn them into something more: true friendship.
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Listen, Slowly
Thanha Lai
A California girl born and raised, Mai can't wait to spend her vacation at the beach. Instead, though, she has to travel to Vietnam with her grandmother, who is going back to find out what really happened to her husband during the Vietnam War. Mai's parents think this trip will be a great opportunity for their out-of-touch daughter to learn more about her culture. But to Mai, those are their roots, not her own. Vietnam is hot, smelly, and the last place she wants to be. Besides barely speaking the language, she doesn't know the geography, the local customs, or even her distant relatives. To survive her trip, Mai must find a balance between her two completely different worlds.
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Little Chicago
Adam Rapp
Little Chicago opens in the office of Children's Services, where eleven-year-old Blacky Brown is being interviewed by a social worker who is trying to determine what has happened to him. At first, Blacky's emotions are blocked, but then he reveals that he has been sexually abused by his mother's boyfriend, and is released into his mother's custody. Thus begins an alternately harrowing and hopeful story of a brave boy's attempts to come to grips with a grim reality. Mary Jane, a classmate who is similarly ostracized, tries to help Blackie, but he soon takes refuge instead in the gun that he buys.
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Little Chick and Mommy Cat
Marta Zafrilla
A tale that explores themes of diversity, adoption, and alternative family life follows a little chick who shares a happy relationship with his loving mother, a cat with soft fur, tickling whiskers, and a long beautiful tail.
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Little Cub
Olivier Dunrea
A young bear cub, who is alone in the world, and Old Bear, who is grumpy and tired of living alone, meet and discover what they have been missing.
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Little & Lion
Brandy Colbert
Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her [stepbrother] Lionel fall in love with the same girl, pushing Lionel's bipolar disorder to spin out of control and forcing Suzette to confront her own demons.
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Little Miss Spider
David Kirk
On her very first day of life, Little Miss Spider searches for her mother and finds love in an unexpected place.
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Little Treasure
Anat Georgy
Little Treasure celebrates love, life, and choice: Natalie sets off on a journey to find a special treasure, with the help of nice people, she finds this treasure inside of her; a little baby, born with the help of a donor. This book will help single parents by choice tell their children how they came into the world in this special way. Sweet illustrations peppered with a healthy dose of humor and lots of love.
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Lives Turned Upside Down: Homeless Children in Their Own Words and Photographs
Jim Hubbard
Two girls and two boys, ages nine to twelve, talk about their own personal experiences with homelessness and life in shelters.
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Living in Secret
Cristina Salat
Amelia's mother helps her run away from her father who has custody and establish a new home and identity in San Francisco with her mother's girlfriend.
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Living Violet (The Cambion Chronicles, #1)
Jaime Reed
Samara is intrigued by her flirtatious co-worker, Caleb, but his secrets draw Samara into a world that places her loved ones in danger, forcing her to take a risk that will change her life forever.
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Living with Mom and Living with Dad
Melanie Walsh
Her parents don't live together anymore, so sometimes the child in this book lives with her mom and cat, and sometimes with Dad. Her bedroom looks a little different in each house, and she keeps some toys in one place and some in another. But her favorite toys she takes with her wherever she goes.
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Locomotion
Jacqueline Woodson
In a series of poems, eleven-year-old Lonnie writes about his life, after the death of his parents, separated from his younger sister, living in a foster home, and finding his poetic voice at school.
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Long Way Down
Jason Reynolds
In Long Way Down, a young boy's brother has just died from a gunshot wound and through brief, powerful poems the reader gets the story of the brothers, the story of urban families, the story of a neighborhood, and the story of the impulse for revenge and the strength it takes to resist that. Terrifically powerful and searingly sad, this is Jason Reynolds continuing to explore some deep truths for young people.
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Lorraine
Ketch Secor
Pa Paw and Lorraine always lift their spirits by playing music together, but their instruments are missing when a fearsome storm hits the Tennessee hills.
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Losers Bracket
Chris Crutcher
When it comes to family, Annie is in the losers bracket. While her foster parents are great (mostly), her birth family would not have been her first pick. And no matter how many times Annie tries to write them out of her life, she always gets sucked back into their drama. Love is like that. But when a family argument breaks out at Annie's swim meet and her nephew goes missing, Annie might be the only one who can get him back. With help from her friends, her foster brother, and her social service worker, Annie puts the pieces of the puzzle together, determined to find her nephew and finally get him into a safe home.
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Lost!: A Dog Called Bear
Wendy Orr
When Logan's dog runs away as he and his mother are moving to a new home after his parents separate, a girl named Hannah, who longs for a dog of her own, finds him.
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Lots of Grandparents
Shelly Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly
Color photographs show grandparents of different ages, ethnic groups, shapes, and sizes sharing happy times with grandchildren.
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Lou Caribou: Weekdays with Mom, Weekends with Dad
Marie-Sabine Roger and David Wilson
A young reindeer lives with his mother and visits his father on weekends. The story of Lou Caribou will help small children come to terms with their own parents' separation. This book shows that parents who live apart still lovingly care for their child, and that their separation has not diminished their love for him.
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Louisiana's Song
Kerry Madden
Set in the Appalachia in 1963, Livy Two has come to terms with the fact that her father is a changed man after being in a coma and so now, along with her eleven-year-old sister, Louisiana, she must find a way to take care of their father and their large mountain family.
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Love
Stacy McAnulty
A sweet and simple story about what love is really all about invites children to find love in everyday moments, from baking cookies with a grandparent to receiving notes in a lunchbox.
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Love and Other Four Letter Words
Carolyn Mackler
Sammie never expected sweet sixteen to be perfect, but she didn't expect her parents to separate or to have to move to a tiny apartment in New York. As the hot, hummid summer progresses, she finds new depths to the word "love," and comes to understand other words such as "gain," "loss," and "grow."
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Love Drugged
James Klise
Fifteen-year-old Jamie is dismayed by his attraction to boys, and when a beautiful girl shows an interest in him, he is all the more intrigued by her father's work developing a drug called Rehomoline.
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Love in the Corner Pocket
Marlene Perez
Chloe, a Laguna Beach, California, high school student, sorts out questions about her parents' separation and her own friendships and love life as she gets ready to compete in a pool tournament.
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Love in the Time of Global Warming
Francesca Lia Block
After a devastating earthquake destroys the West Coast, causing seventeen-year-old Penelope to lose her home, her parents, and her ten-year-old brother, she navigates a dark world, holding hope and love in her hands and refusing to be defeated.