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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The Aunt in Our House
Angela Johnson
When The Aunt comes to live with them, the entire family enjoys her company and helps her forget about the home she has lost.
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The Baby Kangaroo Treasure Hunt
Carmen Martinez Jover
Two kangaroos: Jack and Sam, a gay couple, have their own baby by means of an egg donor and surrogacy. This story enables children to easily understand how they were conceived and it helps gay parents explain in an easy and loving how how their family was formed.
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The Ballad of Knuckles McGraw
Lois J. Peterson
After Kevin's mother abandons him, he takes refuge in his fantasy of becoming a cowboy, but his reality is a foster home and grandparents he doesn't know.
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The Barefoot Book of Children
David Dean, Tessa Strickland, and Kate DePalma
The Barefoot Book of Children takes its readers on a visual trek across the globe, where they discover that -- despite our different clothes and homes and languages -- we are more alike than different.
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The Beauty That Remains
Ashley Woodfolk
Autumn, Shay, and Logan, whose lives intersect in complicated ways, each lose someone close to them and must work through their grief.
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The Best of Both Nests
Jane Clarke
One day, Mrs. Stork tells Stanley that Dad is going to fly off and build his own nest. At school, Stanley worries about Dad missing Fathers' Flyday Friday. But his friend Stella tells him, "Two nests are better than one."
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The Best Single Mom in the World
Mary Zisk
A girl tells how her mother decided to become a single parent and traveled overseas to adopt her and describes their happy life as a family.
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The Big House
Carolyn Coman
When Ivy and Ray's parents are sent to jail, and they are left in the custody of their parent's accusers, they decide to look for evidence that will "spring" their parents.
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The Big Split
Rowan McAuley
When their parents decide to separate, Holly and her sister Faith are really upset. Can they still be a family if their mum and dad aren't married anymore?
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The Blending of Foster and Adopted Children into a Family
Heather Lehr Wagner and Marvin Rosen
Explores issues facing families confronting the challenges created by adoption and foster care, and identifies steps members of blended families can take to ensure that they have a strong foundation.
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The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond
Brenda Woods
A biracial girl finally gets the chance to meet the African American side of her family."
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The Boy in the Dress
David Walliams
Dennis' life is boring and lonely. His mother left two years ago, his truck driver father is depressed, his brother is a bully and, worst of all, "no hugging" is one of their household rules. But one thing Dennis does have is soccer--he's the leading scorer on his team. Oh, and did we mention his secret passion for fashion?
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The Boy on Cinnamon Street
Phoebe Stone
A story about a wounded girl and the boy who won't give up on her. 7th grader Louise should be the captain of her school's gymnastics team - but she isn't. She's fun and cute and should have lots of friends - but she doesn't. And there's a dreamy boy who has a crush on her - but somehow they never connect. Louise has everything going for her - so what is it that's holding her back? Phoebe Stone tells the winning story of the spring when 7th grader Louise Terrace wakes up, finds the courage to confront the painful family secret she's hiding from - and finally get the boy.
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The Boy with Two Lives
Abbas Kazerooni
From the author of the bestselling memoir On Two Feet and Wings, this is the story of refugee Abbas's double life in England: elite schoolboy by day, homeless by night.
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The Bridge Home
Padma Venkatraman
Life is harsh in Chennai's teeming streets, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, eleven-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter--and friendship--on an abandoned bridge. With two homeless boys, Muthi and Arul, the group forms a family of sorts. And while making a living scavenging the city's trash heaps is the pits, the kids find plenty to laugh about and take pride in too. After all, they are now the bosses of themselves and no longer dependent on untrustworthy adults. But when illness strikes, Viji must decide whether to risk seeking help from strangers or to keep holding on to their fragile, hard-fought freedom.
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The Buddha of Suburbia
Hanif Kureishi
Karim is the son of an assimilated Indian businessman in London. When his Zen-obsessed father becomes the guru of the swinging suburban scene, Karim is swept up into the world of theater, art, drugs, rock and roll and sexual exploration.
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The Can Man
Laura E. Williams
After watching a homeless man collect empty soft drink cans for the redemption money, a young boy decides to collect cans himself to earn money for a skateboard until he has a change of heart.
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The Cardboard Kingdom
Chad Sell
Welcome to a neighborhood of kids who transform ordinary boxes into colorful costumes, and their ordinary block into cardboard kingdom. This is the summer when sixteen kids encounter knights and rogues, robots and monsters—and their own inner demons—on one last quest before school starts again. In the Cardboard Kingdom, you can be anything you want to be—imagine that! The Cardboard Kingdom was created, organized, and drawn by Chad Sell with writing from ten other authors: Jay Fuller, David DeMeo, Katie Schenkel, Kris Moore, Molly Muldoon, Vid Alliger, Manuel Betancourt, Michael Cole, Cloud Jacobs, and Barbara Perez Marquez. The Cardboard Kingdom affirms the power of imagination and play during the most important years of adolescent identity-searching and emotional growth.
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The Carnival of Lost Souls: A Handcuff Kid Novel
Laura Quimby
For one charismatic kid, the dangerous world of the Forest of the Dead becomes the setting for the ultimate escape trick in this exciting debut novel.Jack Carr has been shuttled from foster home to group home to foster home his entire life. The only constant has been his interest in magic, especially handcuff escapes like those mastered by his hero, Harry Houdini. When he’s placed with the Professor, however, he feels like he’s finally found a home—but his new guardian is hiding a dangerous secret.Years ago the Professor bartered his soul to the undead magician Mussini, and when the payment is due, he sends Jack in his place. Jack must travel with Mussini to the Forest of the Dead, a place in between the real world and the afterlife, where he’s forced to perform in Mussini’s traveling magic show. If he stays in the Forest long enough, he’ll die himself. To find his way home, he’ll have the help of Mussini’s other “minions”—kids stolen just like Jack—and his wits, nothing more. Can he follow the example of his hero, Houdini, and escape the inescapable?
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The Child in the Fathers' Hearts: A Story of Adoption
Paul Janson
A picture book designed to be read to adopted children of gay parents. The child is adopted by two fathers. The opening comments are about the author's own philosophy of children, that all children begin in the heart of their parents however they come to be a part of a family.
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The Choices We Make
Karma Brown
Hannah and Kate became friends in the fifth grade, when Hannah hit a boy for looking up Kate's skirt with a mirror. While they've been close as sisters ever since, Hannah can't help but feel envious of the little family Kate and her husband, David, have created, complete with two perfect little girls. She and Ben have been trying for years to have a baby, so when they receive the news that she will likely never get pregnant, Hannah's heartbreak is overwhelming. But just as they begin to tentatively explore the other options, it's Kate's turn to do the rescuing. Not only does she offer to be Hannah's surrogate, but Kate is willing to use her own eggs to do so. Full of renewed hope, excitement and gratitude, these two families embark on an incredible journey toward parenthood, until a devastating tragedy puts everything these women have worked toward at risk of falling apart.
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The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother
James McBride
Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve children. James McBride, journalist, musician and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful memoir.
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The Color Purple
Alice Walker
This feminist novel about an abused and uneducated black woman's struggle for empowerment was praised for the depth of its female characters and for its eloquent use of black English vernacular.
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The Cook's Family
Laurence Yep
As her parents' arguments become more frequent, Robin looks forward to the visits that she and her grandmother make to Chinatown, where they pretend to be an elderly cook's family, giving Robin new insights into her Chinese heritage.
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The Cottage in the Woods
Katherine Coville
Presents the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" as told by young Teddy's governess, who came to work at the Vaughn family "cottage" shortly before a golden-haired girl, ragged and dirty, entered the home and soon became a beloved foster child, until evil characters tried to take her away.