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.

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A Boy's Best Friend

Joan Alden

Seven-year-old Will, an asthma sufferer and a target for bullies, finally gets the birthday wish of his dreams.
After Ever After

Jordan Sonnenblick

Although Jeff and Tad, encouraged by a new friend, Lindsey, make a deal to help one another overcome aftereffects of their cancer treatments in preparation for eighth-grade graduation, Jeff still craves advice from his older brother Stephen, who is studying drums in Africa.
A Lei for Tutu

Rebecca Nevers Fellows

Nahoa loves making leis with her grandmother and looks forward to helping her create a special one for Lei Day, until her grandmother becomes very ill.
All We Can Do Is Wait

Richard Lawson

In the hours after a bridge collapse rocks their city, four teens are forced to face their pasts and the prospect of very different futures as they wait at Boston General Hospital for news of their loved ones.
American Ace

Marilyn Nelson

Sixteen-year-old Connor tries to help his severely depressed father, who learned upon his mother's death that Nonno was not his biological father, by doing research that reveals Dad's father was probably a Tuskegee Airman.
A Name on the Quilt

Jeannine Atkins

A family reminisces while gathered together to make a panel for the AIDS Memorial Quilt in memory of a beloved uncle.
And Then There Were Four

Nancy Werlin

When five high school students are brought together under mysterious circumstances, they begin to piece together a theory that their parents are working together to kill them all.
Anything Could Happen

Will Walton

Tretch lives in a small town where everybody's in everybody else's business. He's in love with his straight best friend, Matt, and Matt is completely oblivious to the way Tretch feels. Meanwhile, Tretch's family has no idea who he really is, and the girl at the local bookstore has no clue how off-base her crush on him is.
A Picture Book of Helen Keller

David A. Adler

Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on June 27, 1880. When she was just a year and a half old, she was left blind and deaf from an illness. In a very simple text, the author covers the important facts of Helen Keller's life. Besides her extraordinary work with teacher Anne Mansfield Sullivan, she published several books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. Her bravery, brilliance, and spirit brought hope to millions of disabled people.
A Picture Book of Louis Braille

David A. Adler

Presents the life of the nineteenth-century Frenchman, accidentally blinded as a child, who originated the raised dot system of reading and writing used throughout the world by the blind.
A Pillow for My Mom

Charissa Sgouros

Through the changing seasons a young girl struggles with her concern and love for her mother who is sick in hospital.
Ashes to Asheville

Sarah Dooley

Twelve-year-old Fella is swept away on a wild road trip by her older sister Zany to fulfill their late mother's dying wish.
Between Mom and Jo

Julie Anne Peters

Nick has a three-legged dog named Lucky, some pet fish, and two moms who think he's the greatest kid ever. And he happens to think he has the greatest Moms ever, but everything changes when his birth mom and her wife, Jo, start to have marital problems. Suddenly, Nick is in the middle, and instead of having two Moms to turn to for advice, he has no one.
Brianna Breathes Easy: A story about Asthma

Virginia L. Kroll

Brianna gets the lead in the Thanksgiving school playshell be Hero the Hen! She almost forgets about the coughing and breathing trouble she's been having.Brianna loves practicing her leaping and flapping. But at the dress rehearsal, she has a bad coughing attack and feels a tightness in her chest. The teacher calls 911 and the paramedics take Brianna to the hospital. There, Dr. Anderson diagnoses Brianna with asthma. Brianna begins to learn about her disease and how to manage it. Things are soon under control, and she's back on stage for her debut!
Cursed

Karol Ruth Silverstein

Depicts young teen Ricky Bloom's struggles with her recent juvenile inflammatory disease diagnosis, which comes amid family upheaval and challenges at school.
Dancing with Katya

Dori Chaconas

In the late 1920s, Anna tries to help her younger sister Katya regain her strength and joy in life after she becomes crippled by polio.
Different Kind of Life

Katie Leone

Michael Davis is a nine year old boy who struggles with living up to the expectations of his father. In order to toughen up, he agrees to sign up for Pee-wee football to learn how to be the man he is suppose to be. During the routine sports physical the doctor discovers a serious condition that turns Michael's world upside down and inside out. Without warning, he is presented with a decision that he never dreamed possible. With his best friend by his side and the support of his mother, the child tries to make a decision beyond his years and discovers his true self in the process.
Don't Turn Around

Michelle Gagnon

After waking up on an operating table with no memory of how she got there, Noa must team up with computer hacker Peter to stop a corrupt corporation with a deadly secret.
El Deafo

Cece Bell

Starting at a new school is scary, even more so with a giant hearing aid strapped to your chest! At her old school, everyone in Cece's class was deaf. Here she is different. She is sure the kids are staring at the Phonic Ear, the powerful aid that will help her hear her teacher. Too bad it also seems certain to repel potential friends. Then Cece makes a startling discovery. With the Phonic Ear she can hear her teacher not just in the classroom, but anywhere her teacher is in school — in the hallway... in the teacher's lounge... in the bathroom! This is power. Maybe even superpower! Cece is on her way to becoming El Deafo, Listener for All. But the funny thing about being a superhero is that it's just another way of feeling different... and lonely. Can Cece channel her powers into finding the thing she wants most, a true friend?
Everything, Everything

Nicola Yoon

The story of a teenage girl who's literally allergic to the outside world. When a new family moves in next door, she begins a complicated romance that challenges everything she's ever known. The narrative unfolds via vignettes, diary entries, texts, charts, lists, illustrations, and more.
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.
Halle Berry: Academy Award-Winning Actress

Kerrily Sapet

A look at the life and career of the famous actress.
Helen Keller: Toward the Light

Stewart Graff and Polly Anne Graff

A biography of the blind and deaf woman who rose above her physical disabilities to international renown and who helped other handicapped persons to live fuller lives.
Hiroshima Dreams

Kelly Easton-Ruben

Lin O'Neil, a talented but shy girl growing up in Providence, Rhode Island, develops a close relationship with her Japanese grandmother, who shares Lin's gift of precognition.
House of Robots: Robot Revolution (House of Robots Series Book 3)

James Patterson

Robots on strike! Sammy's underappreciated mechanical helpers are causing chaos in book 3 of the bestselling House of Robots series