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
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Train to Somewhere
Even Bunting
In the late 1800s, Marianne travels westward on the Orphan Train in hopes of being placed with a caring family.
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Unreachable
Katie Leone
Janice Rosenthal is entering her eighth year of teaching, but it might be her last. Never before has she had a student as unruly and insubordinate as this one. Andrew Bryant is the terror of seventh grade, a student known for driving teachers to the edge of retirement, and he is in her class. How can Janice--and the rest of her students--make it through the school year with such a disruptive force in the classroom? Her only hope is to try to break through the orphan's defenses, to pierce a wall that no other teacher has ever scratched. When she discovers Andrew's secret, two lives will be changed forever.
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Welcome to the Family
Mary Hoffman
Introduces different types of households and discusses families with children, adoption, foster parents, same-sex parents, and fertility treatments.
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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 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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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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Where I Belong
Mary Downing Hahn
Eleven-year-old Brendan Doyle doesn't get along with his foster mother, he's failing fifth grade, and he's bullied mercilessly by a band of boys in his class. Then Brendan meets two potential friends--an eccentric old man and a girl from summer school--and he sees that there may be hope for him after all.
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White Oleander
Janet Fitch
When Ingrid, a brilliant but obsessed poet, is sent to prison for murder, her only child Astrid must find a place for herself as she journeys through a series of foster homes. With determination and humor, Astrid confronts the challenges of loneliness and poverty, and strives to learn who a motherless child in an indifferent world can become.
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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.
