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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No Fixed Address
Susin Nielsen
Twelve-year-old Felix's appearance on a television game show reveals that he and his mother have been homeless for a while, but also restores some of his faith in other people.
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No Mirrors in My Nana's House
Ysaye M. Barnwell
A girl discovers the beauty in herself by looking into her Nana's eyes.
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None of the Above
I.W. Gregorio
A groundbreaking story about a teenage girl who discovers she's intersex...and what happens when her secret is revealed to the entire school. Incredibly compelling and sensitively told, None of the Above is a thought-provoking novel that explores what it means to be a boy, a girl, or something in between.
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No Ordinary Family
Ute Krause and Nicholas Miller
When seven little bandits suddenly have to share their dad’s time with a Princess and her six little princes and princesses—it’s a royal mess. “When are they leaving?” “Oh, they’re staying, my dear,” said their dad. And stay they did. But when the little bandits devise a plan to make them leave, they soon discover that it’s royally boring without them… It’s patchwork times three in Ute Krause’s new delightful offering—for when their mom meets a dragon…the bandits and the royals alike are never the same again (and they couldn’t be happier for it!)
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No Place
Todd Strasser
Rendered homeless by circumstances beyond his family's control, Dan is forced to move to Tent City, where he begins fighting for better conditions only to be targeted by an adversary who wants to destroy the impoverished region.
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Nora & Kettle (Paper Starts #1)
Lauren Nicolle Taylor
Set in 1953, Nora & Kettle explores the collision of two teenagers facing extraordinary adversity. Kettle, an orphaned Japanese American, is struggling to make a life in the aftermath of an event in history not often referred to--the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the removal of children from orphanages for having "one drop of Japanese blood in them." Nora, the daughter of a civil rights lawyer who is building a compensation case for the interned Japanese Americans, is barely surviving her violent home and dreams of a life outside of the brownstone walls. Their meeting is inevitable, devastating and ultimately healing.
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Nora's Ark
Natalie Kinsey-Warnock
This heartwarming story by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock is based on a real-life event: the Vermont Flood of 1927. Watercolors by Caldecott Medal-winning artist Emily Arnold McCully capture both the sweeping drama of the flood and the comfort of a cozy kitchen filled with friends, neighbors, and good cheer.
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No Small Thing
Natale Ghent
Then twelve-year-old Nathaniel and his two sisters, Cid and Queenie, discover an ad for a free pony in the paper, they can hardly believe their luck. The pony is theirs, as long as they can afford to take care of it. But what will their mother say? Nat knows things are hard for his mom; his dad walked out on them four years ago. But having a pony would help Nat and Cid stop bickering and it would mean so much to Queenie. When Nat's mother lets them keep it, life is still not easy, but at the end of each day, Nat knows his pony is waiting from him. Until a fire destroys the barn.
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Notes from the Blender
Trish Cook and Brendan Halpin
Two teenagers -- a heavy-metal-music-loving boy who is still mourning the death of his mother years earlier, and a beautiful, popular girl whose parents divorced because her father is gay -- try to negotiate the complications of family and peer relationships as they get to know each other after learning that their father and mother are marrying each other.
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Notes on a Near-Life Experience
Olivia Birdsall
Mia never thought she'd be the child of a broken home. Yet when she's 15 years old, one day her father just up and moves out. As her family life crumbles, her love life is finally coming together. Julian, her brother Allen's best friend and her longtime crush, has finally noticed her—and being with Julian makes her happier than she can put into words. Meanwhile, her mother has disappeared into work, her brother is skipping school and acting weird, and her father is cohabitating with a frighteningly sexy Peruvian woman named Paloma. Mia wishes the divorce would just go away so she could focus on Julian...but she can't ignore her problems forever. In this honest, witty, utterly accessible winner of the Delacorte Press Contest, first-time author Olivia Birdsall creates an authentic and lovable teenager in Mia.
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Not Even Bones
Rebecca Schaeffer
Nita's mother hunts monsters and, after Nita dissects and packages them, sells them online, but when Nita follows her conscience to help a live monster escape, she is sold on the black market in his place.
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Nothing Happened
Molly Booth
Modern-day retelling of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing taking place at an idyllic summer camp where the counselors have to cope with simmering drama.
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Noughts & Crosses (Noughts & Crosses #1)
Malorie Blackman
Sephy is a Cross - a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a nought - a 'colourless' member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses. The two have been friends since early childhood. But that's as far as it can go.
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Now is Everything
Amy Giles
The McCauleys look perfect on the outside. But nothing is ever as it seems, and this family is hiding a dark secret. Hadley McCauley will do anything to keep her sister safe from their father. But when Hadley's forbidden relationship with Charlie Simmons deepens, the violence at home escalates, culminating in an explosive accident that will leave everyone changed. When Hadley attempts to take her own life at the hospital post-accident, her friends, doctors, family, and the investigator on the case want to know why. Only Hadley knows what really happened that day, and she's not talking.
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Now Playing: Stoner & Spaz II
Ronald Koertge
High schooler Ben Bancroft, a budding filmmaker with cerebral palsy, struggles to understand his relationship with drug-addict Colleen while he explores a new friendship with A.J., who shares his obsession with movies and makes a good impression on Ben's grandmother.
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Obama: A Promise of Change
David Mendell and Sarah L. Thomson
A journalist who has covered the senator and presidential candidate since his campaign for the Senate offers a portrait that features his childhood and youth in Hawaii and his embrace of seemingly ruthless campaign tactics.
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Obama: Only in America
Carole Weatherford
From birth to election as the first African-American president of the United States, this biography tells the story of Barack Obama through lyrical prose and primary-source quotes from his speeches throughout.
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Odd One out
Nic Stone
High school juniors and best friends Courtney and Jupe, and new sophomore Rae, explore their sexuality and their budding attractions for one another.
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Odd & True
Cat Winters
Trudchen grew up hearing Odette’s stories of their monster-slaying mother and a magician’s curse. But now that Tru’s older, she’s starting to wonder if her older sister’s tales were just comforting lies, especially because there’s nothing fantastic about her own life—permanently disabled and in constant pain from childhood polio. In 1909, after a two-year absence, Od reappears with a suitcase supposedly full of weapons and a promise to rescue Tru from the monsters on their way to attack her. But it’s Od who seems haunted by something. And when the sisters’ search for their mother leads them to a face-off with the Leeds Devil, a nightmarish beast that’s wreaking havoc in the Mid-Atlantic states, Tru discovers the peculiar possibility that she and her sister—despite their dark pasts and ordinary appearances—might, indeed, have magic after all.
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Off-Color
Janet McDonald
Fifteen-year-old Cameron living with her single mother in Brooklyn finds her search for identity further challenged when she discovers that she is the product of a biracial relationship.
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Of Many Colors: Portraits of Multiracial Families
Gigi Kaeser and Peggy Gillespie
Based on an award-winning photo exhibit, this collection of interviews and photographs documents the feelings and experiences of "thirty-nine families who have bridged the racial divide through interracial marriage or adoption."
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Oh, Oh Baby Boy!
Janine Macbeth
Oh, Oh, Baby Boy follows a newborn baby as he grows up, laughs, plays, causes mischief, and makes friends. His father's involvement is woven throughout the story, and depicted in nontraditional ways. The baby's father cuddles, bathes, and cooks with his son, and re-enters the story when the baby boy eventually becomes a father himself, bringing the journey full circle.
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Oliver at the Window
Elizabeth Shreeve
When Oliver's parents move into separate houses, he spends a lot of time looking out of windows with his pet lion as he adjusts to a new preschool and to living in two places.
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Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen
Donna Gephart
After overcoming a number of obstacles, especially in the subject of geography, Olivia is on her way to Hollywood to appear on Jeopardy! and, she hopes, to reunite with her father who left the family two years ago.
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On a Sunbeam
Tillie Walden
In two interwoven timelines, a ragtag crew travels to the deepest reaches of space, rebuilding beautiful, broken structures to piece the past together; and two girls meet in boarding school and fall deeply in love, only to learn the pain of loss.