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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Why Am I Different?
Norma Simon
Portrays everyday situations in which children see themselves as "different" in family life, preferences, and aptitudes, and yet feel that being different is all right.
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Why Don't I Have a Daddy? A Story of Donor Conception
George Anne Clay
As the little lion cub notices all different types of families, he starts to question his own family. His family consists of his mother and him. The little cub learns that while there is no "daddy" in his family, there is a donor lion who made his life possible. Through his mother's love and nurturing, the lion cub understands how special he and his family are.
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Why Mole Shouted and Other Stories
Lore Segal
Young Mole and his grandmother live together and get along well enough most of the time, but in each of these four stories there is an exception to the rule
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Wild Blues
Beth Kephart
Thirteen-year-old Lizzie relates, through a victim statement, her harrowing journey through the Adirondacks seeking her disabled friend, Matias, who was kidnapped by escaped convicts.
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Wild Life
Cynthia C. DeFelice
When twelve-year-old Eric's parents are deployed to Iraq, he goes to live with grandparents he hardly knows in a small town in North Dakota, but his grandfather's hostility and the threat of losing the dog he has rescued are too much and Eric runs away.
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Will
Maria Boyd
Seventeen-year-old Will's behavior has been getting him in trouble at his all-boys school in Sydney, Australia, but his latest punishment, playing in the band for a musical production, gives him new insights into his fellow students and helps him cope with an incident he has tried to forget.
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Willful Machines
Tim Floreen
In a near-future America, a sentient computer program named Charlotte has turned terrorist, but Lee Fisher, the closeted son of an ultraconservative President, is more concerned with keeping his Secret Service detail from finding out about his developing romance with Nico, the new guy at school. But when the spider-like robots that roam the school halls begin acting even stranger than usual, Lee realizes he is Charlotte's next target.
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Will Grayson, Will Grayson
David Levithan and John Green
When two teens, one gay and one straight, meet accidentally and discover that they share the same name, their lives become intertwined as one begins dating the other's best friend, who produces a play revealing his relationship with them both.
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William's Doll
Charlotte Zolotow
More than anything, William wants a doll. He enjoys the other toys his father gives him, like a basketball and a train set, but he still wants a doll. William's grandmother is the only one who really understands his wish.
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Wintering Well
Lea Wait
Twelve-year-old Will Ames and his sister Cassie go to stay with their sister in nearby Wiscasset, Maine, after a disabling accident ruins Will's plans for a career in farming.
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Wired Man and Other Freaks of Nature
Sashi Kaufman
Ben has to wear hearing aids, but being inseparable from the super-popular Tyler allows him to think of himself as normal. But Tyler blows him off senior year and Ben needs to rethink who he is--and who Tyler is.
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Wishworks, Inc.
Stephanie Tolan
When he is granted his wish for a dog from Wishworks, Inc., third-grader Max is disappointed to find that his new pet is nothing like the dog of his imagination.
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Wish You Were Here: Teens Write About Parents in Prison
Autumn Spanne and Nora McCarthy
This timely book features true stories written by teens and parents coping with the complicated feelings of guilt, shame, fear, anger, sadness, and longing that have arisen when the parent is incarcerated. The short entries are eloquent with the pain of separation, the struggle to remain involved in each other's lives while discovering and meeting individual and family needs.
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Witches of Ash and Ruin
E. Latimer
Told in multiple voices, seventeen-year-olds Dayna Walsh and Meiner King, witches from rival covens, team up in a small Irish town to seek a serial killer with motives enmeshed in a web of magic and gods.
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Without Words
Beti Rozen and Peter Hays
Luiz has just arrived in the United States from Brazil which he misses terribly. But the immigrant has a talent for drawing. Encouraged at school, Luiz creates many images, but soon he idealizes his former life. Later, he will discover that Brazil wasn't always so wonderful. Through art, he learns to adapt to his new life.
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Wolfie the Bunny
Ame Dyckman
When her parents find a baby wolf on their doorstep and decide to raise him as their own, Dot is certain he will eat them all up until a surprising encounter with a bear brings them closer together.
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Wonder
R. J. Palacio
Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student.
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Wonderful You
Lauren McLaughlin
A lyrical adoption story that tenderly addresses a baby's transition from the care of her birth mother to that of her adoptive parents. This lovely poem illuminates the role of an adopted child's birth mother, respecting her choice to give her child to a loving family. We follow a mother's journey as she carries her child, searches for deserving parents, and ultimately creates a new family. The story offers a version of the process that is full of warmth, care, and joy. An adoptive mother herself, author Lauren McLaughlin was glad for an opportunity to memorialize her family's own fairy tale, and Meilo So's ethereal illustrations breathe magic into an already wondrous experience.
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Wonders of the Invisible World
Christopher Barzak
Seventeen-year-old Aiden has been living like a ghost since his mother tried to stop a family curse by causing him to forget his psychic experiences but when Jarrod, a childhood friend, returns, so do the memories and Aiden is compelled to seek the truth and release them all from the story that has trapped them.
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Words on Bathroom Walls
Julia Walton
Adam has just been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He sees and hears people who aren't there: Rebecca, a beautiful girl who understands him; the Mob Boss, who harasses him; and Jason, the naked guy whos unfailingly polite. It should be easy to separate the real from the not real, but Adam can't. Still, theres hope. As Adam starts fresh at a new school, he begins a drug trial that helps him ignore his visions. Suddenly everything seems possible, even love. When he meets Maya, a fiercely intelligent girl, he desperately wants to be the great guy that she thinks he is. But then the miracle drug begins to fail, and Adam will do anything to keep Maya from discovering his secret.
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Yafi's Family: An Ethiopian Boys Journey of Love, Loss, and Adoption
Linda Pettitt and Sharon Darrow
Yafi's family recalls his adoption from Ethiopia with stories, memories, and photographs.
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Year of the Jungle
Suzanne Collins
Suzy spends her year in first grade waiting for her father, who is serving in Vietnam, and when the postcards stop coming she worries that he will never make it home.
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Yes No Maybe So
Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed
Jamie Goldberg, who chokes when speaking to strangers, and Maya Rehrman, who is having the worst Ramadan ever, are paired to knock on doors and ask for votes for the local state senate candidate.
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You and Violence in Your Family
John Giacobello
Explains what family violence is, its various types and how children involved in family violence can get help to learn to cope and adjust.
