Browse by Family Relationship:
Foster Care
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More Than We Can Tell
Brigid Kemmerer
When Rev Fletcher and Emma Blue meet, they both long to share secrets, his of being abused by his birth father, hers of her parents' failing marriage and an online troll who truly frightens her.
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Murphy's Three Homes: A Story for Children in Foster Care
Jan Levinson Gilman
A dog describes the emotional ups and downs of being in multiple foster homes and living in unfamiliar surroundings. Includes note to parents.
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My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life
Rachel Cohn
On her sixteenth birthday, Elle Zoellner leaves the foster care system to live with the father she never knew in Tokyo, Japan.
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My New Family: A First Look at Adoption
Pat Thomas
Explains adoption, the feelings of insecurity that such a situation may cause, and the nature of biological parents, adoptive parents, and foster parents.
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Nellie's Promise (American Girls)
Valerie Tripp
Nellie O'Malley finally has a home again. She and her little sisters, Bridget and Jenny, are happily settling in with Samantha's family in New York City.
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One for the Murphys
Lynda Mullaly Hunt
Follows the experiences of foster kid Carley, who uses humor and street smarts to cope with her unpredictable life until the loving, bustling Murphy family offers her more stability and a greater sense of belonging than she ever thought possible.
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One Hundred is a Family
Pam Muñoz Ryan
Groups making up many different kinds of "families" introduce the numbers from one to ten and then by tens to one hundred.
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Orbiting Jupiter
Gary D. Schmidt
Jack, 12, tells the gripping story of Joseph, 14, who joins his family as a foster child. Damaged in prison, Joseph wants nothing more than to find his baby daughter, Jupiter, whom he has never seen. When Joseph has begun to believe he'll have a future, he is confronted by demons from his past that force a tragic sacrifice.
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Peace, Locomotion
Jacqueline Woodson
Through letters to his little sister, who is living in a different foster home, sixth-grader Lonnie, also known as "Locomotion," keeps a record of their lives while they are apart, describing his own foster family, including his foster brother who returns home after losing a leg in the Iraq War.
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Peas and Carrots
Tanita S. Davis
After her mother is arrested, fifteen-year-old Dess is sent to live with the foster family that took in her baby brother several years before, and although she and her new foster sister, Hope, clash immediately, they soon realize they have much in common.
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Pictures of Hollis Woods
Patricia Reilly Giff
A troublesome twelve-year-old orphan, staying with an elderly artist who needs her, remembers the only other time she was happy in a foster home, with a family that truly seemed to care about her.
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Raven's Gate
Anthony Horowitz
Sent to live in a foster home in a remote Yorkshire village, Matt, a troubled fourteen-year-old English boy, uncovers an evil plot involving witchcraft and the site of an ancient stone circle.
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Runaway!
Janet Willig
After leaving home because her drunken father frequently beats her, fourteen-year-old Jodie tries out a couple of foster homes and eventually finds peace with a loving Christian family.
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Runaway Twin
Peg Kehret
Thirteen-year-old Sunny, accompanied by a stray dog, takes advantage of a windfall to travel from her Nebraska foster home to Enumclaw, Washington, to find the twin sister from whom she was separated at age three.
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Saving Baby Doe
Danette Vigilante
Lionel and Anisa are the best of friends and have seen each other through some pretty tough times--Anisa's dad died and Lionel's dad left, which is like a death for Lionel. They stick together no matter what. So when Lionel suggests a detour through a local construction site on their way home, Anisa doesn't say no. And that's where Lionel and Anisa make a startling discovery--a baby abandoned in a port-o-potty. Anisa and Lionel spring into action. And in saving Baby Doe, they end up saving so much more.
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Singing Tree and Laughing Water
Sylvia Hardwick
Relates the adventures of two Native American sisters after they go to live with a foster mother.
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SkateFate
Juan Felipe Herrera
Lucky Z, a Chicano foster child, loved living on the edge until a drag racing accident left him in a wheelchair, but as he struggles to find his place in a new high school, he begins writing poetry everywhere about anything, and in finding his voice he also discovers the beauty around him.
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Solace of the Road
Siobhan Dowd
While running away from a London foster home just before her fifteenth birthday, Holly has ample time to consider her years of residential care and her early life with her Irish mother, whom she is now trying to reach.
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Someone Has Led This Child to Believe
Regina Louise
After years of jumping from one fleeting, often abusive home to the next, Louise meets a counselor named Jeanne Kerr. For the first time in her young life, Louise knows what it means to be seen, wanted, understood, and loved. After Kerr tries unsuccessfully to adopt Louise, the two are ripped apart—seemingly forever—and Louise continues her passage through the cold cinder-block landscape of a broken system, enduring solitary confinement, overmedication, and the actions of adults who seem hell-bent on convincing her that she deserves nothing, that she is nothing. But instead of losing her will to thrive, Louise remains determined to achieve her dream of a higher education. After she ages out of the system, Louise is thrown into adulthood and, haunted by her trauma, struggles to finish school, build a career, and develop relationships. As she puts it, it felt impossible “to understand how to be in the world.” Eventually, Louise learns how to confront her past and reflect on her traumas. She starts writing, quite literally, a new future for herself, a new way to be. Louise weaves together raw, sometimes fragmented memories, excerpts from real documents from her case file, and elegant reflections to tell the story of her painful upbringing and what came after. The result is a rich, engrossing account of one abandoned girl’s efforts to find her place in the world, people to love, and people to love her back.
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Speranza's Sweater
Marcy Pusey
Speranza wears her sweater everywhere, hanging onto the last memories of her birth home, until it's threadbare. Like her unraveled sweater, Speranza must weave together a new story, brining threads from her past and strands from her present, into a future of love, family and the true meaning of home.
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Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth
Frank Cottrell Boyce
Prez knows that the best way to keep track of things is to make a list. That's important when you have a grandfather who is constantly forgetting. And it's even more important when your grandfather can't care for you anymore and you have to go live with a foster family out in the country. Prez is still learning to fit in at his new home when he answers the door to meet Sputnik—a kid who is more than a little strange. First, he can hear what Prez is thinking. Second, he looks like a dog to everyone except Prez. Third, he can manipulate the laws of space and time. Sputnik, it turns out is an alien, and he's got a mission that requires Prez's help: the Earth has been marked for destruction, and the only way they can stop it is to come up with ten reasons why the planet should be saved. Thus begins one of the most fun and eventful summers of Prez's life, as he and Sputnik set out on a journey to compile the most important list Prez has ever made—and discover just what makes our world so remarkable.
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Stellaluna
Janell Cannon
After she falls headfirst into a bird's nest, a baby bat is raised like a bird until she is reunited with her mother.
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Stick Boy
Joan T. Zeier
When a seven-inch growth spurt in the sixth grade makes skinny, self-conscious Eric a school misfit and the victim of the class bully, he is led to befriend Cynthia, a proud and spirited black girl who is disabled.
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Summer Camp Adventure
Marsha Hubler
Having taken a crash course in American Sign Language, Camp Tioga junior counselor Skye tries to communicate with a troublesome camper who is deaf, and when he disappears on horseback into the hills, she and Chad lead the rescue team.
