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:
Incarceration
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The Hunting Accident: A True Story of Crime and Poetry
David L. Carlson
It was a hunting accident; that much Charlie is sure of. That's how his father, Matt Rizzo--a gentle intellectual who writes epic poems in Braille--had lost his vision. It's not until Charlie's troubled teenage years, when he's facing time for his petty crimes, that he learns the truth. Matt Rizzo was blinded by a shotgun blast to the face, but it was while participating in an armed robbery. Newly blind and without hope, Matt began his bleak new life at Stateville Prison. In this unlikely place, Matt's life and very soul were saved by one of America's most notorious killers, Nathan Leopold Jr., of the infamous Leopold and Loeb.
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The Key to Every Thing
Pat Schmatz
For eleven-year-old Tash, Cap’n Jackie isn’t just the elderly next-door neighbor — she’s family. When she disappears, only Tash holds the key that might bring her back.Tash didn’t want to go to camp, didn’t want to spend the summer with a bunch of strangers, didn’t want to be separated from the only two people she has ever been able to count on: her uncle Kevin, who saved her from foster care, and Cap’n Jackie, who lives next door. Camp turns out to be pretty fun, actually, but when Tash returns home, Cap’n Jackie is gone. And Tash needs her — the made-up stories of dolphin-dragons, the warm cookies that made everything all right after a fight, the key Cap’n Jackie always insisted had magic in it. The Captain always said all Tash had to do was hold it tight and the magic would come. Was it true? Could the key bring Cap’n Jackie back?
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The Last to Let Go
Amber Smith
When her mother is arrested for killing Brooke's abusive father, Brooke must confront the shadow of her family's violence and dysfunction.
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The Maze
Will Hobbs
Rick, a fourteen-year-old foster child, escapes from a juvenile detention facility near Las Vegas and travels to Canyonlands National Park in Utah where he meets a bird biologist working on a project to reintroduce condors to the wild.
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The Night Dad Went to Jail: What to Expect When Someone You Love Goes to Jail
Melissa Higgins
When someone you love goes to jail, you might feel lost, scared, and even mad. What do you do? No matter who your loved one is, this story can help you through the tough times.
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The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
Stephanie Oakes
A handless teen escapes from a cult, only to find herself in juvenile detention and suspected of knowing who murdered her cult leader.
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The Same Stuff as Stars
Katherine Paterson
When Angel's self-absorbed mother leaves her and her younger brother with their poor great-grandmother, the eleven-year-old girl worries not only about her mother and brother, her imprisoned father, the frail old woman, but also about a mysterious man who begins sharing with her the wonder of the stars.
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The Traitors Gate
Avi .
When his father is arrested as a debtor in 1849 London, fourteen-year-old John Huffman must take on unexpected responsibilities, from asking a distant relative for help to determining why people are spying on him and his family.
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The Year the Swallows Came Early
Kathryn Fitzmaurice
After her father is sent to jail, eleven-year-old Groovy Robinson must decide if she can forgive the failings of someone she loves.
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Tyrell
Coe Booth
An astonishing new voice in teen literature, writing what is sure to be one of the most talked-about debuts of the year. Tyrell is a young African-American teen who can't get a break. He's living (for now) with his spaced-out mother and little brother in a homeless shelter. His father's in jail. His girlfriend supports him, but he doesn't feel good enough for her? and seems to be always on the verge of doing the wrong thing around her. There's another girl at the homeless shelter who is also after him, although the desires there are complicated. Tyrell feels he needs to score some money to make things better. Will he end up following in his father's footsteps?
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Visiting Day
Jacqueline Woodson and James E. Ransome
A young girl and her grandmother visit the girl's father in prison.
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Waiting for Normal
Leslie Connor
Twelve-year-old Addie tries to cope with her mother's erratic behavior and being separated from her beloved stepfather and half-sisters when she and her mother go to live in a small trailer by the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Schenectady, New York.
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We Are the Ants
Shaun David Hutchinson
Abducted by aliens periodically throughout his youth, Henry Denton is informed by his erstwhile captors that they will end the world in 144 days unless he stops them by deciding that humanity is worth saving.
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Welcome to Bordertown
Holly Black and Ellen Kushner
Stories and poems set in the urban land of Bordertown, a city on the edge of the faerie and human world, populated by human and elfin runaways.
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We Were Here
Matt de la Pena
Haunted by the event that sentences him to time in a group home, Miguel breaks out with two unlikely companions and together they begin their journey down the California coast hoping to get to Mexico and a new life.
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What Do I Say About That?
Julia Cook
This book takes a unique look at the internal struggles with which a child of an incarcerated parent is faced.
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What is Jail, Mommy?
Jackie A. Stanglin
A mother explains to her young daughter why the girl's father is in prison and what his life is like as an inmate.
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What Will Happen to Me?
Howard Zehr and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz
Pairs portraits of children whose parents are incarcerated with the reflections of grandparents who are caring for them and includes resources for caregivers and advice on dealing with the unique emotions of these children.
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When Andy's Father Went to Prison
Martha Whitmore Hickman
When Andy's father is sent to prison for robbery and the family moves to be near him, Andy is afraid of what the kids at his new school will think.
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When Dad Killed Mom
Julius Lester
When Jenna and Jeremey's father kills their artistic mother, they struggle to slowly rebuild a functioning family.
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When Dad Was Away
Karen Littlewood
When Milly's dad is sent to prison, she feels angry and confused. She can't believe her dad won't be at home to read her stories. But soon Mum takes Milly and her brother Sam to visit Dad in prison, and a week later a special package arrives at home - a CD of Milly's favourite animal stories, read especially for her by Dad.
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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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Wild Blues
Beth Kephart
Thirteen-year-old Lizzie relates, through a victim statement, her harrowing journey through the Adirondacks seeking her disabled friend, Matias, who was kidnapped by escaped convicts.
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Wish You Were Here: Teens Write About Parents in Prison
Autumn Spanne and Nora McCarthy
This timely book features true stories written by teens and parents coping with the complicated feelings of guilt, shame, fear, anger, sadness, and longing that have arisen when the parent is incarcerated. The short entries are eloquent with the pain of separation, the struggle to remain involved in each other's lives while discovering and meeting individual and family needs.