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:

Homelessness

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All the Lights in the Night

Arthur A. Levine

Two brothers celebrate Hanukkah on a true and unforgettable journey to freedom as they escape from Tsarist Russia and travel on to Palestine. "The narrative is convincing; the characterizations are natural; and the resolution is touching.
All the Stars Denied

Guadalupe Garcia McCall

When resentment surges during the Great Depression in a Texas border town, Estrella, fifteen, organizes a protest against the treatment of tejanos and soon finds herself with her mother and baby brother in Mexico.
A Long Way Home

Saroo Brierley

An account of the author's inspirational effort to find his India birthplace describes how he was accidentally separated from his family in the mid-1980s, his survival on the streets of Calcutta, his adoption by an Australian family, and his headline-making Google Earth search.
Also Known as Harper

Ann Haywood Leal

Writing poetry helps fifth-grader Harper Lee Morgan cope with her father's absence, being evicted, and having to skip school to care for her brother while their mother works, and things look even brighter after she befriends a mute girl and a kindly disabled woman.
A Shelter in Our Car

Monica Gunning

Since she left Jamaica for America after her father died, Zettie lives in a car with her mother while they both go to school and plan for a real home.
Aunt Pearl

Monica Kulling

Aunt Pearl arrives one day pushing a shopping cart full of her worldly goods. Her sister Rose has invited her to come live with her family. Six-year-old Marta is happy to meet her aunt, who takes her out to look for treasure on garbage day, and who shows her camp group how to decorate a coffee table with bottle caps. But almost immediately, Pearl and Rose start to clash ― over Pearl’s belongings crammed into the house, and over Rose’s household rules. As the weeks pass, Pearl grows quieter and more withdrawn, until, one morning, she is gone. Acclaimed author Monica Kulling brings sensitivity to this story about homelessness, family and love, beautifully illustrated in Irene Luxbacher’s rich collage style.
Becoming Chloe

Catherine Ryan Hyde

A gay teenage boy and a fragile teenage girl meet while living on the streets of New York City and eventually decide to take a road trip across America to discover whether or not the world is a beautiful place.
Brooklyn Burning

Steve Brezenoff

When you're sixteen and no one understands who you are, sometimes the only choice left is to run. If you're lucky, you find a place that accepts you, no questions asked. And if you're really lucky, that place has a drum set, a place to practice, and a place to sleep. For Kid, the streets of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, are that place. Over the course of two scorching summers, Kid falls hopelessly in love and then loses nearly everything and everyone worth caring about. But as summer draws to a close, Kid finally finds someone who can last beyond the sunset.
Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan

Mary Williams and R. Gregory Christie

Eight-year-old Garang is tending cattle far from his family's home in southern Sudan when war comes to his village. Frightened but unharmed, he returns to find everything has been destroyed. Soon Garang meets other boys whose villages have been attacked. Before long they become a moving band of thousands, walking hundreds of miles seeking safety — first in Ethiopia and then in Kenya. The boys face numerous hardships and dangers along the way, but their faith and mutual support help keep the hope of finding a new home alive in their hearts. Based on heartbreaking yet inspirational true events in the lives of the Lost Boys of Sudan, Brothers in Hope is a story of remarkable and enduring courage, and an amazing testament to the unyielding power of the human spirit.
Celebrating Families

Rosemarie Hausherr

Presents brief descriptions of many different kinds of families, both traditional and non-traditional.
Changing Places: A Kid's View of Shelter Living

Judy Wallace, Glen Finland, and Margie Chalofsky

Eight children briefly tell about their experiences living with their mothers in a homeless shelter.
Compromised

Heidi Ayarbe

With her con-man father in prison, fifteen-year-old Maya sets out from Reno, Nevada, for Boise, Idaho, hoping to stay out of foster care by finding an aunt she never knew existed, but a fellow runaway complicates all of her scientifically-devised plans.
Crenshaw

Katherine Applegate

A story about a homeless boy and his imaginary friend that proves in unexpected ways that friends matter, whether real or imaginary.
December

Eve Bunting

A homeless family's luck changes after they help an old woman who has even less than they do at Christmas.
Emmanuel's Dream

Laurie Ann Thompson

Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah's inspiring true story—which was turned into a film, Emmanuel's Gift, narrated by Oprah Winfrey—is nothing short of remarkable. Born in Ghana, West Africa, with one deformed leg, he was dismissed by most people—but not by his mother, who taught him to reach for his dreams. As a boy, Emmanuel hopped to school more than two miles each way, learned to play soccer, left home at age thirteen to provide for his family, and, eventually, became a cyclist. He rode an astonishing four hundred miles across Ghana in 2001, spreading his powerful message: disability is not inability. Today, Emmanuel continues to work on behalf of the disabled. Thompson's lyrical prose and Qualls's bold collage illustrations offer a powerful celebration of triumphing over adversity.
Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

Sungju Lee and Susan McClelland

The memoir of a boy named Sungju who grew up in North Korea and, at the age of twelve, was forced to live on the streets and fend for himself after his parents disappeared. Finally, after years of being homeless and living with a gang, Sungju is reunited with his maternal grandparents and, eventually, his father.
Far From the Tree

Virginia Deberry and Donna Grant

Two African-American sisters, Celeste, a doctor's wife trying to maintain a facade of normalcy, and Ronnie, a struggling actress, inherit a North Carolina house at the death of their father and face a painful encounter with long- suppressed family secrets.
Fly Away Home

Eve Bunting

A homeless boy who lives in an airport with his father, moving from terminal to terminal trying not to be noticed, is given hope when a trapped bird finally finds its freedom.
Freaks and Revelations

Davida Wills Hurwin

"You can come back when you're done being gay." Jason is a 13-year-old who comes out to his religious and conservative mother, only to be cast out of their home. Homeless, he learns how to survive, eventually turning to hustling as a way to live. Doug is a 17-year-old with an abusive father and a chip on his shoulder. Energized and empowered by violence, he gets mixed up with a group of Neo-Nazis. The lives of these two flawed teens spiral towards each other, and one fateful night their paths cross at a fast-food restaurant in Los Angeles, and a horrendous hate crime is committed. Freaks and Revelations is a raw and gripping novel based on the haunting true story of Timothy Zaal and Matthew Boger. Told in alternating perspectives by Jason (Matthew Boger) and Doug (Timothy Zaal), author Davida Wills Hurwin creates a fictional narrative that traces the tragic - but ultimately inspirational - journeys of two very polarized teens.
Girl in Pieces

Kathleen Glasgow

As she struggles to recover and survive, seventeen-year-old homeless Charlotte "Charlie" Davis cuts herself to dull the pain of abandonment and abuse.
Great Joy

Kate DiCamillo

Just before Christmas, when Frances sees a sad-eyed organ grinder and his monkey performing near her apartment, she cannot stop thinking about them, wondering where they go at night, and wishing she could do something to help.
Hidden

Tomas Mournian

Based on a news article written for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. When 15-year-old Ahmed inadvertently outs himself to his parents, they take him to a residential treatment center in the Nevada desert, Serenity Ridge, where he's tortured, molested, and put through a straight rehabilitation program. After 11 months, Ahmed manages to escape to a safe house for runaway gay teens in San Francisco.
Hold Fast

Blue Balliett

On a cold winter day in Chicago, Early's father disappeared, and now she, her mother and her brother have been forced to flee their apartment and join the ranks of the homeless--and it is up to Early to hold her family together and solve the mystery surrounding her father.
Hold Tight, Don't Let Go: A Novel of Haiti

Laura Rose Wagner

In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Nadine goes to live with her father in Miami while her cousin Magdalie, raised as her sister, remains behind in a refugee camp, dreaming of joining Nadine but wondering if she must accept that her life and future are in Port-au-Prince.
Home: A Collaboration of Thirty Distinguised Authors and Illustrators of Children's Books to Aid the Homeless

Michael J. Rosen and Franz Brandenberg

Thirteen authors and seventeen illustrators celebrate the places and things that make up the home, in support of Share Our Strength's (SOS) fight against homelessness.