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.
This collection contains materials from the DIVerse Families bibliography organized by genre.
DIVerse Families is a comprehensive bibliography that demonstrates the growing diversity of families in the United States. This type of bibliography provides teachers, librarians, counselors, adoption agencies, children/young adults, and especially parents and grandparents needing to empower their children with materials that reflect their families.
Browse by Genre:
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What if the Zebras Lost Their Stripes?
John Reitano
If the zebras lost their stripes and became different from one another, some white and some black, would they turn and fight each other and stop living life as loving friends?
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When Friendship Followed Me Home
Paul Griffin
Ben Coffin has never felt like he fits in. A former foster kid, he keeps his head down at school to avoid bullies and spends his afternoons reading sci-fi books at the library. But all that changes when he finds a scruffy abandoned dog named Flip and befriends the librarian's daughter, Halley. For the first time, Ben starts to feel like he belongs in his own life. Then everything changes, and suddenly Ben is more alone than ever. But with a little help from Halley's magician father, Ben discovers his place in the world and learns to see his own magic through others' eyes.
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When I Grow Up...
Paula Vasquez
All of the children in Miss Ester's class know what they want to be like when they grow up: their families! And each family is special and unique. Readers will be surprised and delighted to find that Johnny the duckling's mom and dad have curly tails, stubby noses, and hooves. Johnny and his classmates make it easy for parents to show their little ones that there are many types of families, and they're all made of love.
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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 Beauty
Anna-Marie McLemore
Love grows such strange things. Anna-Marie McLemore's debut novel The Weight of Feathers garnered fabulous reviews and was a finalist for the prestigious YALSA Morris Award, and her second novel, When the Moon was Ours, was longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Now, in Wild Beauty, McLemore introduces a spellbinding setting and two characters who are drawn together by fate―and pulled apart by reality. For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens. The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvides girl who finds him, and to her family, but he’s even more a mystery to himself; he knows nothing more about who he is or where he came from than his first name. As Estrella tries to help Fel piece together his unknown past, La Pradera leads them to secrets as dangerous as they are magical in this stunning exploration of love, loss, and family.
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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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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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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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You Were Always in My Heart: A Shaoey & Dot Adoption Story
Mary Beth Chapman and Steven Curtis Chapman
An abandoned Chinese baby who has been befriended by a ladybug finds her way to an orphanage where she is eventually adopted by an American family.
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Zachary's New Home: A Story for Foster and Adopted Children
Geraldine M. Bloomquist and Paul B. Bloomquist
This story for adopted and foster children describes the adventures of Zachary the kitten, who is taken from his mother's house when she is unable to take care of him. It follows Zachary as he goes into foster care, his adoption by a family of geese, and his feelings of shame, anger and hurt.