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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We See the Moon
Carrie A. Kitze
A story written from the children's perspective, asking the questions that dwell in their hearts about their birthparents. It helps children use the moon as a private tool to connect with a family that is always with them in their hearts.
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We the Children
Andrew Clements
Sixth-grader Ben Pratt's life is full of changes that he does not like--his parents' separation and the plan to demolish his seaside school to build an amusement park--but when the school janitor gives him a tarnished coin with some old engravings and then dies, Ben is drawn into an effort to keep the school from being destroyed.
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We Wanted You
Liz Rosenberg
Parents tell how they waited and prepared for the child that they wanted so much.
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We Were Here
Matt de la Pena
Haunted by the event that sentences him to time in a group home, Miguel breaks out with two unlikely companions and together they begin their journey down the California coast hoping to get to Mexico and a new life.
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Whale Talk
Chris Crutcher
Intellectually and athletically gifted, TJ, a multiracial, adopted teenager, shuns organized sports and the gung-ho athletes at his high school until he agrees to form a swimming team and recruits some of the school's less popular students.
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What are Parents?
Kyme Fox-Lee and Susan Fox-Lee
Playfully rhyming words and beautifully illustrated pictures lead a child through a journey to discovering diversity while learning to accept their unique family.
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What Can I Do?: A Book for Children of Divorce
Danielle Lowry
A young girl tries everything she can think of to keep her parents from getting a divorce, but with the help of her school counselor, she comes to realize that the divorce is not her fault.
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What Comes After
Steve Watkins
When her veterinarian father dies, sixteen-year-old Iris Wight must move from Maine to North Carolina where her Aunt Sue spends Iris's small inheritance while abusing her physically and emotionally, but the hardest to take is her mistreatment of the farm animals.
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What Do I Say About That?
Julia Cook
This book takes a unique look at the internal struggles with which a child of an incarcerated parent is faced.
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Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?
Kathleen Collins
Now available in Ecco's Art of the Story series: a never-before-published collection of stories from a brilliant yet little known African American artist and filmmaker-a contemporary of revered writers including Toni Cade Bambara, Laurie Colwin, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Grace Paley-whose prescient work has recently resurfaced to wide acclaim. Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins's stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues-race, gender, family, and sexuality-that shape the ordinary moments in our lives. In "The Uncle," a young girl who idolizes her handsome uncle and his beautiful wife makes a haunting discovery about their lives. In "Only Once," a woman reminisces about her charming daredevil of a lover and his ultimate-and final-act of foolishness. Collins's work seamlessly integrates the African-American experience in her characters' lives, creating rich, devastatingly familiar, full-bodied men, women, and children who transcend the symbolic, penetrating both the reader's head and heart. Both contemporary and timeless, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love' is a major addition to the literary canon, and is sure to earn Kathleen Collins the widespread recognition she is long overdue.
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What Happened to Goodbye
Sarah Dessen
Following her parents' bitter divorce as she and her father move from town to town, seventeen-year-old Mclean reinvents herself at each school she attends until she is no longer sure she knows who she is or where she belongs.
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What Hearts
Bruce Brooks
After his mother divorces his father and remarries, Asa's sharp intellect and capacity for forgiveness help him deal with the instabilities of his new world.
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What is a Family? A Question & Answer Book
Tamia Sheldon
Featuring Waldorf-style illustrations and depictions of families of all shapes, sizes and colors, this book gets kids talking about their own families while opening their eyes to the fact that even though families don't always look the same, they all share one special thing: love.
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What is Jail, Mommy?
Jackie A. Stanglin
A mother explains to her young daughter why the girl's father is in prison and what his life is like as an inmate.
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What is Real
Karen Rivers
Dex Pratt's life has been turned upside down: his parents have divorced, his mother has remarried, and his father attempts suicide and fails. Dex returns to their small town to care for him. However, he isn't prepared for his father's grow-op or his rotting rented house.
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What Jaime Saw
Carolyn Coman
Having fled to a family friend's hillside trailer after his mother's boyfriend tried to throw his baby sister against a wall, nine-year-old Jamie finds himself living an existence full of uncertainty and fear.
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What Momma Left Me
Renée Watson
After the death of their mother, thirteen-year-old Serenity Evans and her younger brother go to live with their grandparents, who try to keep them safe from bad influences and help them come to terms with what has happened to their family. Includes recipe for red velvet cake.
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What's a Foster Family, Anyway?
Martine Golden Inlay and Jodi Jensen
This book provides a much needed resource in helping children cope with placement into foster care.
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What She Left Behind
Tracy Bilen
Sixteen-year-old Sara's mother goes missing before she and Sara can move to a new town to escape Sara's physically abusive father.
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What the Night Sings
Vesper Stamper
Liberated from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in 1945, Gerta has lost her family and everything she knew. Without her Papa, her music, or even her true identity, she must move past the task of surviving and onto living her life. Gerta meets Lev, a fellow teen survivor, and Michah, who helps Jews reach Palestine. With a newfound Jewish identity she never knew she had, and a return to the life of music she thought she lost forever, Gerta must choose how to build a new future.
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What to Expect When Your Family Becomes a Foster Family
Cindy Unruh
Foster parenting can change your life, as well as the lives of others. It's a great opportunity for your family to learn about love, sacrifice, and relationships. This book will help younger children begin to understand how their family will change when strangers come to live in their home.
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What We Keep is Not Always What Will Stay
Amanda Cockrell
Angie never used to think much about God—until things started getting strange. Like the statue of St. Felix, her secret confidant, suddenly coming off his pedestal and talking to her. And Jesse Francis, sent home from Afghanistan at age nineteen with his leg blown off. Now he's expected to finish high school and fit right back in. Is God even paying attention to this? Against the advice of St. Felix (who knows a thing or two about war), Angie falls for Jesse—who's a lot deeper than most high school guys. But Jesse is battling some major demons. As his behavior starts to become unpredictable, and even dangerous, Angie finds herself losing control of the situation. And she's starting to wonder...can one person ever make things right for someone else?
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What Will Happen to Me?
Howard Zehr and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz
Pairs portraits of children whose parents are incarcerated with the reflections of grandparents who are caring for them and includes resources for caregivers and advice on dealing with the unique emotions of these children.
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What Would Joey Do?
Jack Gantos
Joey's dad just roared into town on a motorcycle, his mom is chasing her ex-husband away with a broomstick, and his grandma's camped out on the couch behind a plastic shower curtain. What's more, Joey's chihuahua has been dognapped, and his mom insists that he be homeschooled with a mean blind girl and her super-religious mother. Welcome to Joey's world. With his new self-assumed role as "Mr. Helpful," Joey's on a mission to make everything and everyone better. Can Joey accomplish all this or will his wild, wired behavior spin him out of control all over again?
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When Andy's Father Went to Prison
Martha Whitmore Hickman
When Andy's father is sent to prison for robbery and the family moves to be near him, Andy is afraid of what the kids at his new school will think.