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:
-
Sunday Shopping
Sally Derby
Every Sunday night a young girl and her grandmother go on an imaginary shopping trip using play money and the advertisements in the newspaper as a guide for their purchases.
-
Sunny
Jason Reynolds
Sunny tries to shine despite his troubled past in this third novel in the critically acclaimed Track series from National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds. Ghost. Patina. Sunny. Lu. 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. They all have a lot of lose, but they all have a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves. Sunny is the main character in this novel, the third of four books in Jason Reynold’s electrifying middle grade series. Sunny is just that—sunny. Always ready with a goofy smile and something nice to say, Sunny is the chillest dude on the Defenders team. But Sunny’s life hasn’t always been sun beamy-bright. You see, Sunny is a murderer. Or at least he thinks of himself that way. His mother died giving birth to him, and based on how Sunny’s dad treats him—ignoring him, making Sunny call him Darryl, never “Dad”—it’s no wonder Sunny thinks he’s to blame. It seems the only thing Sunny can do right in his dad’s eyes is win first place ribbons running the mile, just like his mom did. But Sunny doesn’t like running, never has. So he stops. Right in the middle of a race.
-
Sunshine Picklelime
Pamela Ferguson
PJ Picklelime can talk to birds, hear bells ringing in a woman's curls, and spot moonbows in the night sky, but when a close friend dies and her parents separate, she searches for understanding and a way to recover her sunshine.
-
Surviving the City
Tasha Spillett
Tasha Spillet's graphic-novel debut, Surviving the City, is a story about womanhood, friendship, resilience, and the anguish of a missing loved one. Miikwan and Dez are best friends. Miikwan's Anishinaabe; Dez is Inninew. Together, the teens navigate the challenges of growing up in an urban landscape - they're so close, they even completed their Berry Fast together. However, when Dez's grandmother becomes too sick, Dez is told she can't stay with her anymore. With the threat of a group home looming, Dez can't bring herself to go home and disappears. Miikwan is devastated, and the wound of her missing mother resurfaces. Will Dez's community find her before it's too late? Will Miikwan be able to cope if they don't?
-
Sweet Moon Baby
Karen Henry Clark
The smiling moon watches over a baby girl in China whose parents love her but cannot take care of her, and guides a childless couple that lives far away to the daughter for whom they yearn.
-
Swimming in the Monsoon Sea
Shyam Selvadurai
Although life for Amrith in 1980 Sri Lanka seems rather uneventful and orderly, things change in a hurry when his male cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith finds himself completely enamored with his new visitor. The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it is the season of monsoons. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life before, when his doting mother was still alive. Amrith's holiday plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his school's production of Othello and he is learning to type at Uncle Lucky's tropical fish business. Then, like an unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith's ordered life is storm-tossed. He finds himself falling in love with the Canadian boy. Othello, with its powerful theme of disastrous jealousy, is the backdrop to the drama in which Amrith finds himself immersed.
-
Switch
Ingrid Law
Gypsy Beaumont's magical savvy switches to its opposite when she learns that her mean and decidedly non-magical grandma has Alzheimer's and is going to move in with her family.
-
Take Me with You
Carolyn Marsden
Raised in an Italian orphanage in the years following World War II, a biracial girl named Susanna and her best friend Pina want to be adopted but fear being separated.
-
Taking Terri Mueller
Norma Fox Mazer
For as long as I can remember, It's just been Daddy and me. I can't remember my mother. I was told she died in an accident when I was four, and that's all I know about her. I don't understand why there isn't even a picture of her. The other thing I don't understand is why we're always moving — different towns — with no explanations. I know something is wrong. It begins with my birth certificate— my only link to my mother. Then I overhear a conversation: Tell terri the truth , Why are we moving all the time? Are we running away from something or someone? What kind of secret is Daddy hiding...and why can't he share it with me.
-
Teens with Single Parents: Why Me?
Margaret A. Schultz
Examines the effects of living in a single-parent family, discussing such topics as emotional aspects and economic factors.
-
Telling the Truth to Your Adopted or Foster Child: Making Sense of the Past
Betsy Keefer and Jayne Schooler
Provides parents with the knowledge and tools they need to communicate with their adopted or foster child about the circumstances of their past.
-
Tell Me
Joan Bauer
Feeling scared and powerless when her father's anger escalates and her parents separate, twelve-year-old Anna spends the summer with her grandmother and decides to make a difference when she sees what seems to be a girl held against her will.
-
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born
Jamie Lee Curtis
A young girl asks her parents to tell her again the cherished family story of her birth and adoption.
-
Tell Me a Real Adoption Story
Betty Jean Lifton
A parent tells an adopted child about coming to the family.
-
Ten Days and Nine Nights: An Adoption Story
Yumi Heo
A young girl eagerly awaits the arrival of her newly-adopted sister from Korea, while her whole family prepares.
-
Terror at Bottle Creek
Watt Key
Thirteen-year-old Cort's father is a local expert on hunting and swamp lore in lower Alabama who has been teaching his son everything he knows. But when a deadly Gulf Coast hurricane makes landfall, Cort must unexpectedly put his all skills--and bravery--to the test.
-
Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom
Brendan Halpin and Emily Franklin
Feeling humiliated and confused when his best friend Tessa rejects his love and reveals a long-held secret, high school senior Luke must decide if he should stand by Tessa when she invites a female date to the prom, sparking a firestorm of controversy in their small Indiana town.
-
That's My Daddy and Pop
Tina Rella
That's My Daddy and Pop is the heartwarming story of Jessie, a little girl with two fathers. Jessie doesn't realize that her family isn't 'typical' until a girl in her class asks about her mom. Jessie's Daddy and Pop tell her about the amazing journey they took to adopt her.
-
The 12 Dares of Christa
Marissa Burt
Thirteen-year-old Christa's plans for her favorite holiday are derailed when her parents announce their divorce and Christa spends Christmas in Europe with her mom, but even though her dad remains in Chicago, he sends Christa on a scavenger hunt made up of dares that send her all over Florence, Paris, and London.
-
The 57 Bus
Dashka Slater
One teenager in a skirt. One teenager with a lighter. One moment that changes both of their lives forever. If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued flatlands and attended a large public one. Each day, their paths overlapped for a mere eight minutes. But one afternoon on the bus ride home from school, a single reckless act left Sasha severely burned, and Richard charged with two hate crimes and facing life imprisonment. The 57 Bus is Dashka Slater's true account of the case that garnered international attention and thrust both teenagers into the spotlight.
-
The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Sherman Alexie
Junior, who is already beaten up regularly for being a skinny kid in glasses, goes to the rich white school miles away. Now he's a traget there as well. How he survives all this is an absolute shining must-read and a triumph of the human spirit.
-
The Accidental Adventures of India McAllister
Charlotte Agell
India, an unusual nine-and-a-half-year-old living in small-town Maine, has a series of adventures which bring her closer to her artist-mother, strengthen her friendship with a neighbor boy, and help her to accept the man for whom her father moved away.
-
The American Wei
Marion Hess Pomeranc
When Wei Fong loses his first tooth while going to his family's naturalization ceremony, many soon-to-be Americans join in the search.
-
The Art of Starving
Sam J. Miller
Matt hasn’t eaten in days. His stomach stabs and twists inside, pleading for a meal, but Matt won’t give in. The hunger clears his mind, keeps him sharp—and he needs to be as sharp as possible if he’s going to find out just how Tariq and his band of high school bullies drove his sister, Maya, away. Matt’s hardworking mom keeps the kitchen crammed with food, but Matt can resist the siren call of casseroles and cookies because he has discovered something: the less he eats the more he seems to have...powers. The ability to see things he shouldn’t be able to see. The knack of tuning in to thoughts right out of people’s heads. Maybe even the authority to bend time and space. So what is lunch, really, compared to the secrets of the universe? Matt decides to infiltrate Tariq’s life, then use his powers to uncover what happened to Maya. All he needs to do is keep the hunger and longing at bay. No problem. But Matt doesn’t realize there are many kinds of hunger...and he isn’t in control of all of them.
-
The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan
After her mother's suicide, grief-stricken Leigh Sanders travels to Taiwan to stay with grandparents she never met, determined to find her mother who she believes turned into a bird.