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:
Foster Care
-
Dream of Night
Heather Henson
Told from their different points of view, twelve-year-old Shiloh, a troubled foster child, Dream of Night, an abused former racehorse, and Jess, a woman who cares for both, find healing by helping one another through their pain.
-
Edgar Allan
John Neufeld
When the Fickett family decides to adopt a little black boy, they are faced with threats, angry phone calls, a burning cross on the lawn, and an ultimatum from their oldest daughter.
-
Elliot
Julie Pearson
When Elliot's parents do not know how to take care of him, a social worker takes him to live with a foster family, which begins a series of changes that leave Elliot worried and anxious, until he finds a forever home and a forever family.
-
Everything on a Waffle
Polly Horvath
Eleven-year-old Primrose living in a small fishing village in British Columbia recounts her experiences and all that she learns about human nature and the unpredictability of life in the months after her parents are lost at sea.
-
Everything Under
Daisy Johnson
The dictionary doesn’t contain every word. Gretel, a lexicographer by trade, knows this better than most. She grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries. One phone call from her mother is all it takes for the past to come rushing back. To find her, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals. A runaway boy had found community and shelter with them, and all three were haunted by their past and stalked by an ominous creature lurking in the canal: the bonak. Everything and nothing at once, the bonak was Gretel’s name for the thing she feared most. And now that she’s searching for her mother, she’ll have to face it.
-
Everything You Need to Know about Living in a Foster Home
Joe Falke
Gives examples of teenagers who have been sent to live with foster families, detailing some of the reasons for needing foster care, what to expect, and how to make the necessary adjustments.
-
Extraordinary Birds
Sandy Stark-McGinnis
Eleven-year-old December waits to sprout wings and fly away, until a new foster mother changes her perspective on home and family.--
-
Families
Ann Morris
A simple explanation of families, how they function, how they are different, and how they are alike.
-
Families Change: A Book for Children Experiencing Termination of Parental Rights
Julie Nelson
Written to help children understand why some kids get new foster parents or new adopted moms and dads, with resources for adults.
-
Fans of the Impossible Life
Kate Kate Scelsa
At Saint Francis Prep school in Mountain View, New Jersey, Mira, Jeremy, and Sebby come together as they struggle with romance, bullying, foster home and family problems, and mental health issues.
-
Far Apart, Close in Heart: Being a Family When a Loved One is Incarcerated
Becky Birtha
Children from all walks of life experience various emotions when their parent is in jail or prison, but they learn there are ways to communicate their feelings that will help improve their situation and remind them they are not alone.
-
Far from the Tree
Robin Benway
Grace, adopted at birth, is raised as an only child. At sixteen she's just put her own baby up for adoption, and now is looking for her biological family. She discovers Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister who was also adopted; and Joaquin, their stoic older bio brother, who has no interest in bonding over their shared biological mother after seventeen years in the foster care system. Grace struggles between cautious joy at having found them, and the true meaning of family in all its forms.
-
Fast Break
Mike Lupica
Since his mother's death, Jayson, twelve, has focused on basketball and surviving but he is found out and placed with an affluent foster family of a different race, and must learn to accept many changes, including facing his former teammates in a championship game.
-
Finding the Right Spot: When Kids Can't Live with Their Parents
Janice Levy and Whitney Martin
A young girl living with her foster parent describes the emotional ups and downs of being separated from her mother and living in unfamiliar surroundings. Finding the Right Spot is a story for all kids who can't live with their parents, regardless of the circumstances. It's a story about resilience and loyalty, hope and disappointment, love, sadness, and anger, too.
-
Find Me
Romily Bernard
When teen hacker and foster child Wick Tate finds a dead classmate's diary on her front step, with a note reading "Find me," she sets off on a perverse game of hide-and-seek to catch the killer.
-
Fly Little Bird, Fly!: The True Story of Oliver Nordmark & America's Orphan Trains
Donna Nordmark Aviles
Holding tight to one another, vowing never to be separated, Oliver and Edward board the Orphan Train headed west to find a new home.
-
Forever, or a Long, Long Time
Caela Carter
Flora and her brother, Julian, don’t believe they were born. They’ve lived in so many foster homes, they can’t remember where they came from. And even now that they’ve been adopted, Flora still struggles to believe that they’ve found their forever home. So along with their new mother, Flora and Julian begin a journey to go back and discover their past—for only then can they really begin to build their future.
-
Foster Baby
Rhian Brynjolson
A short, easy to read story for beginner readers and children, with a detailed text to help parents answer questions about foster families.
-
Foster Families
Jeanne Barmat
Describes foster home care, the different circumstances which may make it necessary for a child to live with foster parents, and potential problems and their solutions.
-
Foster Families
Julianna Fields
Explores the history of foster care, describes the reasons children enter foster care, and discusses foster parents, caseworkers, and the conditions in foster homes.
-
Foster Families
Sarah L. Schuette and Gail Saunders-Smith PhD
Simple text and photographs present foster families, including how family members interact with one another.
-
Foster Families (Families Today)
Hilary W. Poole
This book looks at how foster families are made and how they might thrive.
-
Foster Parents
Rebecca Rissman
Defines family, discusses what families are like, and explains the work of foster parents.
-
Foster Youth
Leanne Currie-McGhee
Over 400,000 US youth are in foster care, mainly due to neglect and abuse by their parents. These youth endure instability as they move from home to home, and uncertainty about their future as others make the decision as to whether they should be reunited with their families or become available for adoption. Foster Youth presents a powerful, real-world look at the lives of these vulnerable young people.
-
Genius Squad
Catherine Jinks
After the Axis Institute is blown up, fifteen-year-old Cadell Piggot is unhappily stuck in foster care with constant police surveillance to protect him from the evil Prosper English until he gets an offer to join a mysterious group called Genius Squad.