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:
-
Anger is a Gift
Mark Oshiro
Six years ago, Moss Jefferies' father was murdered by an Oakland police officer. Along with losing a parent, the media's vilification of his father and lack of accountability has left Moss with near crippling panic attacks. Now, in his sophomore year of high school, Moss and his fellow classmates find themselves increasingly treated like criminals in their own school. New rules. Random locker searches. Constant intimidation and Oakland Police Department stationed in their halls. Despite their youth, the students decide to organize and push back against the administration. When tensions hit a fever pitch and tragedy strikes, Moss must face a difficult choice: give in to fear and hate or realize that anger can actually be a gift.
-
Angryman
Gro Dahle
There's someone in the living room. It's Dad. It is Angryman. Boj's father can be very angry and violent. Boj calls this side of his father's personality "Angryman." When Angryman comes no one is safe. Until something powerful happens... Gro Dahle's astute text and Svein Nyhus's bold, evocative art capture the full range of emotions that descend upon a small family as they grapple with "Angryman." With an important message to children who experience the same things as Boj: You are not alone. It's not your fault. You must tell someone you trust. It doesn't have to be this way!
-
Angry Management
Chris Crutcher
Every kid in this group wants to fly. Every kid in this group has too much ballast. Mr. Nak's Angry Management group is a place for misfits. A place for stories. And, man, does this crew have stories. There's Angus Bethune and Sarah Byrnes, who can hide from everyone but each other. Together, they will embark on a road trip full of haunting endings and glimmering beginnings. And Montana West, who doesn't step down from a challenge. Not even when the challenge comes from her adoptive dad, who's leading the school board to censor the article she wrote for the school paper. And straightlaced Matt Miller, who had never been friends with outspoken genius Marcus James. Until one tragic week—a week they'd do anything to change—brings them closer than Matt could have ever imagined.
-
An Inmate's Daughter
Jan Walker
Jenna's mother forbids her to tell her friends that her dad is in prison. Prison reflects on wives and children. Keeping the fact of prison secret becomes more difficult when the newspaper runs a story about Jenna's "Good Samaritan" rescue at the McNeil Island Corrections Center. She just wants to fit in. As Jenna writes in her journal, children of prisoners are doing time too.
-
An Mei's Strange and Wondrous Journey
Stephan Molnar-Fenton
A picture book illustrated by the award-winning artist of Lullaby Raft follows the life of a six-year-old orphaned girl born in China, who is adopted and brought to America, where she learns to adjust to her new, unfamiliar home.
-
Annie's Plaid Shirt
Stacy B. Davids
Annie loves her plaid shirt and wears it everywhere. But one day her mom tells Annie that she must wear a dress to her uncle's wedding. Annie protests, but her mom insists and buys her a fancy new dress anyway. Annie is miserable. She feels weird in dresses. Why can't her mom understand? Then Annie has an idea. But will her mom agree? Annie's Plaid Shirt will inspire readers to be themselves and will touch the hearts of those who love them.
-
Another Way to Dance
Martha Southgate
While spending the summer at the School of American Ballet in New York City, fourteen-year-old Vicki Harris must come to terms with the reality of her parents' divorce, her crush on Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the impact of being an African American on her future as a dancer.
-
Anything Could Happen
Will Walton
Tretch lives in a small town where everybody's in everybody else's business. He's in love with his straight best friend, Matt, and Matt is completely oblivious to the way Tretch feels. Meanwhile, Tretch's family has no idea who he really is, and the girl at the local bookstore has no clue how off-base her crush on him is.
-
A Path of Stars
Anne Sibley O'Brien
A refugee from Cambodia, Dara's beloved grandmother is grief-stricken when she learns her brother has died, and it is up to Dara to try and heal her.
-
A Piece of Home
Jeri Watts
When Hee Jun’s family moves from Korea to West Virginia, he struggles to adjust to his new home. His eyes are not big and round like his classmates’, and he can’t understand anything the teacher says, even when she speaks s-l-o-w-l-y and loudly at him. As he lies in bed at night, the sky seems smaller and darker. But little by little Hee Jun begins to learn English words and make friends on the playground. And one day he is invited to a classmate’s house, where he sees a flower he knows from his garden in Korea — mugunghwa, or rose of Sharon, as his friend tells him — and Hee Jun is happy to bring a shoot to his grandmother to plant a “piece of home” in their new garden. Lyrical prose and lovely illustrations combine in a gentle, realistic story about finding connections in an unfamiliar world.
-
A Pillow for My Mom
Charissa Sgouros
Through the changing seasons a young girl struggles with her concern and love for her mother who is sick in hospital.
-
A Place in My Heart
Mary Grossnickle
Charlie, a chipmunk adopted by a family of squirrels, begins to wonder about his birthparents but is afraid that asking questions will upset his family.
-
A Place in the World
Malcolm Frierson
Set in Baltimore, Ghana, and rural Georgia, a novel of love, marriage, betrayal, divorce, discovery, African heritage, international adoption, racism, and tragedy unfolds. Kwame and Evelyn adopt Kofi whom they adore. After divorce and remarriage, their nationalistic and interracial families clash. Caught between households, Kofi strives to find himself and battles dangerous anxiety attacks.
-
A Place to Call Home
Jackie French Koller
Biracial Anna, 15, is a strong character in search of love & roots following sexual abuse & rejection from her own family. Caring for her two younger siblings after their unreliable mother abandons them, fifteen-year-old Anna discovers the difficulties of trying to be a parent.
-
April Witch
Majgull Azelsson and Linda Schenck
Desirée lies in a hospital bed thinking, dreaming. Born severely disabled, she cannot walk or talk, but she has other capabilities. Desirée is an April witch, clairvoyant and omniscient, traveling through time and space into the world denied her. The woman who gave Desirée up at birth subsequently took in three foster daughters, who know nothing of the existence of their fourth “sister.” Sensing that her own time is short, Desirée has decided that one of the others has lived the life she herself deserved. One day, each of the three women receives a mysterious letter that forces her to examine her past and her present—setting in motion a complex fugue of memory, regret, and confrontation that builds to a shattering climax.
-
A Question of Manhood
Robin Reardon
When his brother, a soldier in the Army during the Vietnam War, reveals that he is gay, and then is killed in action, sixteen-year-old Paul Landon, haunted by a knowledge he cannot share, gets a glimpse of who his brother really was when he meets JJ, a new employee at his parent's pet supply store--and a gay college freshman.
-
Arcady's Goal
Eugene Yelchin
When twelve-year-old Arcady is sent to a children's home after his parents are declared enemies of the state in Soviet Russia, soccer becomes a way to secure extra rations, respect, and protection but it may also be his way out if he can believe in and love another person--and himself.
-
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Benjamin Alire Senz
Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.
-
Army Brats
Daphne Benedis-Grab
When the Bailey family moves into an army base in Virginia there are a lot of adjustments to make; twelve-year-old Tom runs afoul of the base school bully, ten-year-old Charlotte finds herself trying too hard to make friends with the "cool" girls, and six-year-old Rosie is just being difficult as usual--but they come together to investigate a mysterious building full of weird cages, and uncover Fort Patrick's secrets.
-
Aru Shah and the End of Time
Roshani Chokshi
Twelve-year-old Aru stretches the truth to fit in at her private school, but when she is dared to prove an ancient lamp is cursed, she inadvertently frees an ancient demon.
-
A Safe Place
Maxine Trottier
To escape her father's abuse, Emily and her mother come to a shelter where they find a safe place to stay with other women and children in similar circumstances. At night, a little girl and her mother seek safety from an abusive daddy by going to a safe place, the white house on the hill.
-
Ash
Malinda Lo
In this variation on the Cinderella story, Ash grows up believing in the fairy realm that the king and his philosophers have sought to suppress, until one day she must choose between a handsome fairy cursed to love her and the King's Huntress whom she loves.
-
A Shelter in Our Car
Monica Gunning
Since she left Jamaica for America after her father died, Zettie lives in a car with her mother while they both go to school and plan for a real home.
-
Ashes to Asheville
Sarah Dooley
Twelve-year-old Fella is swept away on a wild road trip by her older sister Zany to fulfill their late mother's dying wish.
-
A Silent Voice, Volume 1
Yoshitoki Oima
Shoya is a bully. When Shoko, a girl who can’t hear, enters his elementary school class, she becomes their favorite target, and Shoya and his friends goad each other into devising new tortures for her. But the children’s cruelty goes too far. Shoko is forced to leave the school, and Shoya ends up shouldering all the blame. Six years later, the two meet again. Can Shoya make up for his past mistakes, or is it too late?