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 Porcupine of Truth
Bill Konigsberg
Carson Smith isn't thrilled to be spending the summer with her estranged dad in Billings, Montana. But then he meets Aisha Stinson, the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. And the smartest. And the funniest. They connect like he never has with anyone. Also she's a lesbian. So there's that. Carson's dad is still bitter about the disappearance of his dad more than thirty years earlier. When Carson and Aisha discover a box full of cards from his grandfather, some of them recent, they realize the old man is still out there somewhere. What are two bored teenagers in the middle of nowhere to do? So Carson and Aisha begin a journey with no destination, to find a man who wanted to be lost, in an unreliable Dodge Neon, with one very prickly mascot. And what comes next is an extraordinary, enlightening, hilarious, inspiring, complete and utter mindblower of a road trip that will transform both their lives.
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The Possibility of Somewhere
Julia Day
Although on opposite sides of every social hierarchy their friends and families can imagine, including race, class, and social status, popular Ash Gupta, the son of wealthy, immigrant Asian-Indian parents, and anti-social Eden Moore, whose biggest goal is to escape her family's poverty and trailer-park existence, grow close as they compete to become class valedictorian.
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The Pros of Cons
Allison Cherry, Lindsay Ribar, and Michelle Schusterman
Phoebe Byrd, Vanessa Montoya-O'Callaghan, and Callie Buchannan are three teenagers with very different interests and somewhat different problems, but today they are all in Orlando to attend different conventions/competitions--and when a crazy mix-up in the hotel lobby brings the three girls together, they form an unlikely friendship against the chaotic background of the Orlando convention scene.
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The Quiet Place
Sarah Stewart
When Isabel and her family move to the United States, Isabel misses all the things she left behind in Mexico, especially her aunt Lupita and hearing people speak Spanish. But she also experiences some wonderful new things -- her first snow storm and a teacher who does not speak Spanish but has a big smile. Even better, Papa and her brother Chavo help her turn a big box into her own quiet place, where she keeps her books and toys and writes letters to Aunt Lupita. As she decorates and adds more and more on to her quiet place, it is here that Isabel feels the most at home in her new country while she learns to adjust to the changes in her life.
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The Raven Boys
Maggie Stiefvater
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them--not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain. He has it all--family money, good looks, devoted friends--but he's looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little. For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.
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The Red Blanket
Eliza Thomas
Tells the story of a single woman who goes to China to adopt a baby. Based on the author's life.
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The Red Pencil
Andrea Davis Pinkney
After her tribal village is attacked by militants, Amira, a young Sudanese girl, must flee to safety at a refugee camp, where she finds hope and the chance to pursue an education in the form of a single red pencil and the friendship and encouragement of a wise elder.
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The Red Pyramid
Rick Riordan
Brilliant Egyptologist Dr. Julius Kane accidentally unleashes the Egyptian god Set, who banishes the doctor to oblivion and forces his two children to embark on a dangerous journey, bringing them closer to the truth about their family and its links to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs.
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The Red Pyramid: The Graphic Novel
Rick Riordan
Siblings Sadie and Carter Kane discover that the gods of Egypt are waking, and the worst of them?Set?has his sights on them. to Stop him, the duo embarks on a dangerous journey across the globe, one that brings Carter and Sadie ever closer to the truth about their family and its connection to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs. The heart-stopping action and magic explode off the page in The Red Pyramid, The Graphic Novel, based on the worldwise best-selling novel by Rick Riordan.
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The Red Thread: An Adoption Fairy Tale
Grace Lin
A sad king and queen find joy and happiness after a mysterious red thread leads them to a baby waiting to be adopted.
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The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise
Dan Gemeinhart
Five years. That's how long Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, have lived on the road in an old school bus, criss-crossing the nation. It's also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters in a car crash. Coyote hasn’t been home in all that time, but when she learns that the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished―the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box―she devises an elaborate plan to get her dad to drive 3,600 miles back to Washington state in four days...without him realizing it. Along the way, they'll pick up a strange crew of misfit travelers. Lester has a lady love to meet. Salvador and his mom are looking to start over. Val needs a safe place to be herself. And then there's Gladys... Over the course of thousands of miles, Coyote will learn that going home can sometimes be the hardest journey of all...but that with friends by her side, she just might be able to turn her “once upon a time” into a “happily ever after.”
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There's Only One of Me!
Pat Hutchins
Daughter Sister Half-sister Stepdaughter Stepsister Cousin Niece Granddaughter Great-Granddaughter There are so many things to be when the relatives are coming to your birthday party But sometimes the best thing of all is to be a birthday girl. Oh, happy birthday
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The Ring Bearer
Floyd Cooper
Jackson's mom is getting married, and Jackson is nervous about his role and his new family.
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The Road to Paris
Nikki Grimes
Inconsolable at being separated from her older brother, eight-year-old Paris is apprehensive about her new foster family but just as she learns to trust them, she faces a life-changing decision.
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The Romantics
Leah Konen
When his first big relationship crumbles on the heels of his parents' painful separation, seventeen-year-old Gael is heartbroken until Love intervenes.
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The Rope Walk: A Novel
Carrie Brown
At her tenth birthday party, Alice, a motherless young girl protected by her family, encounters two people that change her life--Theo, a biracial boy from New York City, and Kenneth, an artist suffering from the ravages of AIDS.
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The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths and Magic
F.T. Lukens
Desperate to pay for college, Bridger Whitt is willing to overlook the peculiarities of his new job--entering via the roof, the weird stacks of old books and even older scrolls, the seemingly incorporeal voices he hears from time to time--but it's pretty hard to ignore being pulled under Lake Michigan by ... mermaids? Worse yet, this happens in front of his new crush, Leo, the dreamy football star who just moved to town. Fantastic. When he discovers his eccentric employer Pavel Chudinov is an intermediary between the human world and its myths, Bridger is plunged into a world of pixies, werewolves, and Sasquatch. The realm of myths and magic is growing increasingly unstable, and it is up to Bridger to ascertain the cause of the chaos, eliminate the problem, and help his boss keep the real world from finding the world of myths.
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The Rules of Survival
Nancy Werlin
Seventeen-year-old Matthew recounts his attempts, starting at a young age, to free himself and his sisters from the grip of their emotionally and physically abusive mother.
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The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
Stephanie Oakes
A handless teen escapes from a cult, only to find herself in juvenile detention and suspected of knowing who murdered her cult leader.
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The Same Stuff as Stars
Katherine Paterson
When Angel's self-absorbed mother leaves her and her younger brother with their poor great-grandmother, the eleven-year-old girl worries not only about her mother and brother, her imprisoned father, the frail old woman, but also about a mysterious man who begins sharing with her the wonder of the stars.
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The Saturday Boy
David Fleming
If there's one thing I've learned from comic books, it's that everybody has a weakness--something that can totally ruin their day without fail. For the wolfman it's a silver bullet. For Superman it's Kryptonite. For me it was a letter. With one letter, my dad was sent back to Afghanistan to fly Apache helicopters for the U.S. army. Now all I have are his letters. Ninety-one of them to be exact. I keep them in his old plastic lunchbox--the one with the cool black car on it that says Knight Rider
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The Secret Ingredient
Stewart Lewis
After a chance meeting with a psychic, Olivia, a teen cook living in Los Angeles with her two dads and misfit brother, finds a vintage cookbook with handwritten notes inside and pieces together a story that turns a normal summer into a search for her birth mother.
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The Secret Life of Prince Charming
Deb Caletti
Seventeen-year-old Quinn has heard all her life about how untrustworthy men are, so when she discovers that her charismatic but selfish father, with whom she has recently begun to have a tentative relationship, has stolen from the many women in his life, she decides she must avenge this wrong.
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These Dreams of You
Steve Erickson
The election of the country's first black president prompts failed novelist Zan Nordhoc and his wife to solve the mystery surrounding their adopted black daughter's life, an epic journey that helps a struggling family salvage its bonds.
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The Serpent's Shadow
Rick Riordan
Despite their best efforts, Carter and Sadie Kane can't seem to keep Apophis, the chaos snake, down. Now Apophis is threatening to plunge the world into eternal darkness, and the Kanes are faced with the impossible task of having to destroy him once and for all. Unfortunately, the magicians of the House of Life are on the brink of civil war, the gods are divided, and the young initiates of Brooklyn House stand almost alone against the forces of chaos. The Kanes' only hope is an ancient spell that might turn the serpent's own shadow into a weapon, but the magic has been lost for a millennia. To find the answer they need, the Kanes must rely on the murderous ghost of a powerful magician who might be able to lead them to the serpent's shadow...or might lead them to their deaths in the depths of the underworld.