This collection contains materials on the topic of kinship care from the DIVerse Families bibliography. Kinship care stories discuss temporary guardianship of a child or teenager by a relative when the parent(s) are unable to provide care due to certain circumstances. This is not a legal declaration and it is assumed that guardianship will go back to the parents.
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:
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A Family is a Family is a Family
Sara O'Leary
When a teacher asks the children in her class to think about what makes their families special, the answers are all different in many ways -- but the same in the one way that matters most of all. One child is worried that her family is just too different to explain, but listens as her classmates talk about what makes their families special. One is raised by a grandmother, and another has two dads. One is full of stepsiblings, and another has a new baby.
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All Families are Different
Sol Gordon and Vivien Cohen
Discusses differences in families in today's society, as well as what makes each family special.
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All Families are Special
Norma Simon
Students in Mrs. Mack's class describe their families--big or small, living together or apart, with two moms or none--and learn why every family is special and important.
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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.
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An Enchantment of Ravens
Margaret Rogerson
Isobel is a prodigy portrait artist with a dangerous set of clients: the sinister fair folk, immortal creatures who cannot bake bread, weave cloth, or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and Isobel's paintings are highly prized. But when she receives her first royal patron--Rook, the autumn prince--she makes a terrible mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes--a weakness that could cost him his life. Furious and devastated, Rook spirits her away to the autumnlands to stand trial for her crime.
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Billy Had to Move: A Foster Care Story
Theresa Ann Fraser
Child Protection Services have been involved with Billy and his mother for some time now. He has been happily settled in a kinship placement with his grandmother and enjoys his pet cat, interacting with neighbors and even taking piano lessons. As the story unfolds, Billy's grandmother has unexpectedly passed away and so the story of Billy Had To Move begins. Unfortunately, Billy's mother cannot be located. Mr. Murphy, Billy's social worker, places him in the foster home of Amy, Tim, and their baby "Colly." Billy experiences great loss resulting not only from his grandmother's death, but also the loss of the life he knew. Billy's inner journey therefore has also begun and with the help of Ms. Woods, a Play Therapist, there is hope.
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Burning City
Ariel Dorfman and Joaquin Dorfman
Sixteen-year-old Heller Highland, who is living with his grandparents while his parents are away, burns rubber across Manhattan delivering bad news by bicycle, and as a summer heat wave melts the city, he is struck by first love.
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By the Dawn's Early Light
Karen Ackerman
A young girl and her brother stay with their grandmother while their mother works at night.
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Debbie Harry Sings in French
Meagan Brothers
When Johnny completes an alcohol rehabilitation program and his mother sends him to live with his uncle in North Carolina, he meets Maria, who seems to understand his fascination with the new wave band Blondie, and he learns about his deceased father's youthful forays into "glam rock," which gives him perspective on himself, his past, and his current life.
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Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children #2)
Seanan McGuire
In Down Among the Sticks and Bones, twin girls Jack and Jill find themselves thrust into a world of monsters and mad scientists, and something they thought they'd never experience: choice.
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Dumbfounded: Big Money. Big Hair. Big Problems. Or Why Having It All Isn't for Sissies.
Matt Rothschild
The author describes growing up under the care of his grandmother after his mother left him for Italy and her fourth husband, and his struggle to fit into the genteel world of Upper East Side Manhattan and his eccentric and dysfunctional family.
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Escaping Tornado Season: A Story in Poems
Julie Williams
Poems describe how thirteen-year-old Allie, living with her grandparents in a small Minnesota town in the 1960s, struggles to cope with her father's recent death, being abandoned by her mother, and trying to fit in at school.
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Extra Innings
Robert Newton Peck
After a tragic airplane crash that claims the lives of most of his family, sixteen-year-old Tate goes to live with his wealthy great-grandfather and his adopted black great-aunt Vidalia and he finds unexpected solace in the stories of her childhood spent travelling with a Depression-era Negro baseball team.
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Families
Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly
Big or small, similar or different-looking, there are all kinds of families. Some have one parent, some have two, and many include extended family. This inclusive look at many varieties of families will help young readers see beyond their own immediate experiences.
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Families are Different
Nina Pellegrini
An adopted Korean girl discovers that her classmates have different types of families
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Families, Families, Families!
Suzanne Lang
A host of animals portrays all kinds of non-traditional families.
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Five, Six, Seven, Nate!
Tim Federle
Now on Broadway as second understudy for E.T., Nate Foster keeps in close contact with his best friend, Libby, as he faces his nemesis, and his own insecurities as the cast member with the least training and experience.
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Golden Boy
Tara Sullivan
Light eyes, yellow hair and white skin-- Habo is an albino, strange and alone. His father, unable to accept Habo, abandons the family. When they are forced from their small Tanzanian village, Habo knows he is to blame. The family seeks refuge with an aunt in Mwanza....
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Gracias, the Thanksgiving Turkey
Joy Cowley
Trouble ensues when Papa gets Miguel a turkey to fatten up for Thanksgiving and Miguel develops an attachment to it.
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Grand
Marla Stewart Konrad
This picture book shows the many special and everyday moments that occur between grandparents and grandchildren.
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Grandparents Raising Kids
Rae Simons
In 2005, 6 million children were being raised by their grandparents. Sometimes, their grandchildren's parents had died, sometimes they were in prison, and sometimes they just couldn't cope with raising children. When grandparents take in their grandchildren to raise, they have some difficulties most families don't have. They're older, for one thing, and they also have to deal with their own children and that relationship. But they have the wisdom and experience they've gained from raising one set of children already, and this can help. The families in this book have had both good and bad experiences, but they have learned a great deal through them.
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Hidden Roots
Joseph Bruchac
Although he is uncertain why his father is so angry and what secret his mother is keeping from him, eleven-year-old Sonny knows that he is different from his classmates in their small New York town.
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I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Will Walton
For most of his young life Avery has dealt with his alcoholic mother with the help of his grandfather Pal--he immerses himself in poetry and popular music, and now that high school is over for the summer, he makes out with his best friend Luca (who understands about alcoholic mothers), but the death of his grandfather creates a hole in his life that he can not seem to crawl out of.
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If I Tell
Janet Gurtler
Raised by her grandparents, seventeen-year-old Jasmine, the result of a biracial one night stand, has never met her father but has a good relationship with her mother until she sees her mother's boyfriend kissing Jaz's best friend.
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Itch
Michelle D. Kwasney
In 1968, after the death of her beloved Gramps, Delores "Itch" Colchester and her grandmother move from Florida to an Ohio trailer park, where she meets new people and, when she learns that a friend is being abused by her mother, tries her best to emulate her plain-spoken grandfather.