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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Social Intercourse
Greg Howard
Told from both viewpoints, Beckett Gaines, an out-and-proud choir member, and star quarterback Jaxon Parker team up to derail the budding romance between their parents.
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Solace of the Road
Siobhan Dowd
While running away from a London foster home just before her fifteenth birthday, Holly has ample time to consider her years of residential care and her early life with her Irish mother, whom she is now trying to reach.
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Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen
Arin Andrews
Seventeen-year-old Arin Andrews shares all the hilarious, painful, and poignant details of undergoing gender reassignment as a high school student in this winning teen memoir.
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Somebody's Daughter
Zara Phillips
A hard-hitting and witty memoir about an adopted woman's lifelong quest to find her birth parents - and her identity. It is the fascinating and revealing account of how a beautiful woman's life has been dominated by her adoption and how it has affected her and those around her.
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Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You
Peter Cameron
Eighteen-year-old James living in New York City with his older sister and divorced mother struggles to find a direction for his life.
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Some Kind of Happiness
Claire Legrand
Finley Hart is sent to her grandparents' house for the summer, but her overwhelmingly sad days continue until she escapes into her writings, which soon turn mysteriously real as she realises she must save this magical world in order to save herself.
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Someone Has Led This Child to Believe
Regina Louise
After years of jumping from one fleeting, often abusive home to the next, Louise meets a counselor named Jeanne Kerr. For the first time in her young life, Louise knows what it means to be seen, wanted, understood, and loved. After Kerr tries unsuccessfully to adopt Louise, the two are ripped apart—seemingly forever—and Louise continues her passage through the cold cinder-block landscape of a broken system, enduring solitary confinement, overmedication, and the actions of adults who seem hell-bent on convincing her that she deserves nothing, that she is nothing. But instead of losing her will to thrive, Louise remains determined to achieve her dream of a higher education. After she ages out of the system, Louise is thrown into adulthood and, haunted by her trauma, struggles to finish school, build a career, and develop relationships. As she puts it, it felt impossible “to understand how to be in the world.” Eventually, Louise learns how to confront her past and reflect on her traumas. She starts writing, quite literally, a new future for herself, a new way to be. Louise weaves together raw, sometimes fragmented memories, excerpts from real documents from her case file, and elegant reflections to tell the story of her painful upbringing and what came after. The result is a rich, engrossing account of one abandoned girl’s efforts to find her place in the world, people to love, and people to love her back.
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Some People Have Two Dads
Luca Panzini and Fabri Kramer
This first book from the Some Families series is about Daisy, a happy little girl with two dads. We follow her through the story of her birthday and learn how fathers were helped by a surrogate to bring Daisy into their lives. An increasing number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) couples are having children through surrogacy, co-parenting, donor, and adoption.
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Some People Have Two Mums
Fabri Framer and Luca Panzini
This second book from the Some Families series is about Milo, a happy little boy with two mums. We follow him through his bedtime routine and learn how his mothers were helped by a donor to bring Milo into their lives. An increasing number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) couples are having children through surrogacy, co-parenting, donor, and adoption.
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Sometimes it's Grandmas and Grandpas, Not Mommies and Daddies
Gayle Byrne
A young girl who lives with her grandparents experiences warmth, love, and closeness, even when she wonders why her parents are not raising her.
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Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry
Bebe Moore Campbell
A little girl learns coping skills with the help of her grandmother, neighbors and school friends, when her mother's mental illness disrupts her daily routine.
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Sometimes We Were Brave
Pat Brisson
Jerome's mother is a sailor in the United States Navy, and when she is away at sea he tries to be brave even though misses her and has some bad days.
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So Much Closer
Susane Colasanti
When Brooke discovers that the love of her life, Scott Abrams, is moving from their New Jersey suburb to New York City for senior year, she decides to follow hime there. Living with her estranged father and adjusting to a whole new school are challenging--and things get even worse when she finds out that Scott already has a girlfriend. But as she learns to navigate the big city, she starts to discover a whole new side of herself, and realizes that sometimes love can find you even when you're not looking for it.
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Sonya's Family (All Kinds of Families)
Elliot Riley
There are many types of families. Meet Sonya's family. Her parents are divorced so she spends time with each of them separately.
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So Totally Emily Ebers
Lisa Yee
In a series of letters to her absent father, twelve-year-old Emily Ebers deals with moving cross-country, her parents' divorce, a new friendship, and her first serious crush.
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Sovereign (Nemesis #2)
April Daniels
As the superhero Dreadnought, Danny Tozer is protecting the city of New Port on her own, but after the emergence of a billionaire supervillain, she finds herself attacked on all sides, while she deals with her troubled family life.
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Speranza's Sweater
Marcy Pusey
Speranza wears her sweater everywhere, hanging onto the last memories of her birth home, until it's threadbare. Like her unraveled sweater, Speranza must weave together a new story, brining threads from her past and strands from her present, into a future of love, family and the true meaning of home.
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Splish, Splat!
Alexis Domney
When Colin asks to have his bedroom painted, his mother hires two deaf professionals to do the job, but when the two painters Betty and Molly get too chatty on the job, they produce an unintended effect on the walls.
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Split
Swati Avasthi
A teenaged boy thrown out of his house by his abusive father goes to live with his older brother, who ran away from home years ago to escape the abuse.
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Sprout
Dale Peck
When Sprout and his father move from Long Island to Kansas after the death of his mother, he is sure he will find no friends, no love, no beauty. But friends find him, the strangeness of the landscape fascinates him, and when love shows up in an unexpected place, it proves impossible to hold. An incredible, literary story of a boy who knows he's gay, and the town that seems to have no place for him to hide.
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Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth
Frank Cottrell Boyce
Prez knows that the best way to keep track of things is to make a list. That's important when you have a grandfather who is constantly forgetting. And it's even more important when your grandfather can't care for you anymore and you have to go live with a foster family out in the country. Prez is still learning to fit in at his new home when he answers the door to meet Sputnik—a kid who is more than a little strange. First, he can hear what Prez is thinking. Second, he looks like a dog to everyone except Prez. Third, he can manipulate the laws of space and time. Sputnik, it turns out is an alien, and he's got a mission that requires Prez's help: the Earth has been marked for destruction, and the only way they can stop it is to come up with ten reasons why the planet should be saved. Thus begins one of the most fun and eventful summers of Prez's life, as he and Sputnik set out on a journey to compile the most important list Prez has ever made—and discover just what makes our world so remarkable.
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Stalker Girl
Rosemary Graham
Carly never meant to become a stalker. She just wanted to find out who Brian started dating after he dumped her. But a little harmless online research turns into a quick glance, and that turns into an afternoon of watching. Soon Carly is putting all of her energy into following Brian's new girlfriend, all of the sadness she feels about her mom's recent breakup, all of the anger she feels over being pushed aside by her dad while he prepares for his new wife's new baby. When Carly's stalking is discovered in the worst possible way by the worst possible person, she is forced to acknowledge her problem and the underlying issues that led to it.
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Standing on My Own Two Feet: A Child's Affirmation of Love in the Midst of Divorce
Tamara Schmitz
Addison's parents are divorced and he lives in one house with his mom and another with his dad, but one thing he knows above all is that both his parents love him and they always will.
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Starfish
Akemi Dawn Bowman
Kiko Himura yearns to escape the toxic relationship with her mother by getting into her dream art school, but when things do not work out as she hoped Kiko jumps at the opportunity to tour art schools with her childhood friend, learning life-changing truths about herself and her past along the way.
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Star of the Week: A Story of Love, Adoption, and Brownies with Sprinkles
Darlene Friedman
As her turn to be "Star of the Week" in her kindergarten class approaches, Cassidy-Li puts together a poster with pictures of her family, friends, and pets, and wonders about her birthparents in China.