This collection contains materials on the topic of incarceration from the DIVerse Families bibliography. Incarceration stories discuss family members who have been imprisoned due to criminal acts. They can be confined in prison, jail, or juvenile detention. These stories often highlight the impact that incarcerated parents and/or children can have on the family.
Family relationships grow through the connections we create with the people in our lives. Your family can be made of blood or non-blood relatives, friends, or pets, or a combination of these. Diverse families and their relationships are slowly becoming the new norm and will only continue to grow as the world progresses.
Browse by Family Relationship:
-
A Card for My Father
Samantha Thornhill
A Card For My Father by Samantha Thornhill with illustrations by Morgan Clement is the first title in a trilogy of picture books exploring the lasting effects, big and small, of a father’s incarceration on his first-grade daughter, Flora. In A Card For My Father, how can Flora complete her class assignment to write a Father’s Day card when she’s never met her father?
-
After Tupac & D Foster
Jacqueline Woodson
In the New York City borough of Queens in 1996, three girls bond over their shared love of Tupac Shakur's music, as together they try to make sense of the unpredictable world in which they live.
-
All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated
Nell Bernstein
In this "moving condemnation of the U.S. penal system and its effect on families" (Parents’ Press), award-winning journalist Nell Bernstein takes an intimate look at parents and children—over two million of them—torn apart by our current incarceration policy. Described as "meticulously reported and sensitively written" by Salon, the book is "brimming with compelling case studies...and recommendations for change" (Orlando Sentinel); Our Weekly Los Angelescalls it "a must-read for lawmakers as well as for lawbreakers."
-
Amber was Brave, Essie was Smart
Vera B. Williams
A series of poems tells how two sisters help each other deal with life while their mother is working and their father has been sent to jail.
-
An Ember in the Ashes
Sabaa Tahir
Laia is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire's greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim that they will help to save her brother from execution.
-
An Inmate's Daughter
Jan Walker
Jenna's mother forbids her to tell her friends that her dad is in prison. Prison reflects on wives and children. Keeping the fact of prison secret becomes more difficult when the newspaper runs a story about Jenna's "Good Samaritan" rescue at the McNeil Island Corrections Center. She just wants to fit in. As Jenna writes in her journal, children of prisoners are doing time too.
-
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Benjamin Alire Senz
Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.
-
A Visit to the Big House
Oliver Butterworth
When Willy, Rose, and their mother go to visit Daddy in prison, they are quite anxious. But once Daddy appears and they can talk and ask questions.
-
Bait
Alex Sanchez
Diego keeps getting into trouble because of his explosive temper until he finally finds a probation officer who helps him get to the root of his anger so that he can stop running from his past.
-
Breaking Out
Barthe DeClements
As thirteen-year-old Jerry enters junior high school, he continues to adjust to the fact that his father is in prison for theft. Sequel to "Five Finger Discount" and "Monkey See Monkey Do."
-
Bronxwood
Coe Booth
Tyrell's life is spinning out of control after his father is released from prison, his little brother is placed in foster care, and the drug dealers he's living with are pressuring him to start dealing.
-
Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London
Andrea Warren
Warren takes you on a journey into the workhouses, slums, factories, and schools of Victorian England, and into the world of Dickens. She shows how he used his pen to do battle on behalf of the poor, becoming one of the great reformers of his or any age.
-
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.
-
Coping When a Parent is in Jail
John J. La Valle
This book discusses problems that are common to children who have incarcerated parents.
-
Dad's in Prison
Sandra Cain and Margaret Speed
Tells the story of two brothers whose father is sent to prison. Narrated by the elder brother, the book describes the boys' experiences and emotions during and after their father's arrest and throughout their first visit to see him in prison.
-
Dear Yvette (Throwback Diaries)
Ni-Ni Simone
After a street fights ends with a jail sentence, Yvette is forced to live far from anything and anyone she's ever known, but starting her life over again may show her what it means to have a real family.
-
Deena Misses Her Mom
Jonae Haynesworth, Jesse Holmes, Layonnie Jones, and Kahliya Ruffin
Lately, Deena has been getting angry. A lot. She acts out in school and keeps getting in trouble. Everyone is surprised because she used to be very calm, but that was before her mother went to jail. Her dad, her grandma, and her best friend Josey all do their best to help her out, but Deena doesn’t want to talk about it. Will a day at the carnival with her Dad help her open up?
-
Do Not Pass Go
Kirkpatrick Hill
When Deet's father is jailed for using drugs, Deet learns that prison is not what he expected, nor are other people necessarily the way he thought they were.
-
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.
-
Fighting for Dontae
Mike Castan
When Mexican American seventh-grader Javier is assigned to work with a special education class and connects with Dontae, who has both physical and mental disabilities, his reputation among gang members and drug abusers no longer seems very important.
-
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.
-
Finlater
Shawn Stewart Ruff
In this Lambda Literary Award-winning debut, the course of growing up in just-this-side-of-segregation 1970s Cincinnati, Ohio, seems predictable if uninspiring for Cliffy Douglas. That is, until the deadbeat father of this gifted 13-year-old black kid from the Finlater Gardens Projects appears out of nowhere. The real fun and trouble begin when Noah, a Jewish boy he meets in junior high school, takes him on a joyride to first lust and love.
-
Five-Finger Discount
Barthe DeClements
Ten-year-old Jerry's attempts to adjust to his new school and make new friends are complicated by his determination to keep secret the fact that his father is serving time in the local prison for being a thief.
-
Four-Four-Two
Dean Hughes
From the author of Soldier Boys and Search and Destroy comes a thought-provoking, action-packed story based on the little-known history of the Japanese Americans who fought with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II. Yuki Nakahara is an American. But it's the start of World War II, and America doesn't see it that way. Like many other Japanese Americans, Yuki and his family have been forced into an internment camp in the Utah desert. But Yuki isn't willing to sit back and accept this injustice-it's his country too, and he's going to prove it by enlisting in the army to fight for the Allies. When Yuki and his friend Shig ship out, they aren't prepared for the experiences they'll encounter as members of the "Four-Four-Two," a segregated regiment made up entirely of Japanese-American soldiers. Before Yuki returns home-if he returns home-he'll come face to face with persistent prejudices, grueling combat he never imagined, and friendships deeper than he knew possible.
-
Gaijin: American Prisoner of War
Matt Faulkner
After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, a thirteen-year-old California boy who is half Japanese is sent to an internment camp. Story based on the history of the author's great-aunt.