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 LGBTQ:
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King of the Screwups
K.L. Going
After getting in trouble yet again, popular high school senior Liam, who never seems to live up to his wealthy father's expectations, is sent to live in a trailer park with his gay "glam-rocker" uncle.
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Kiss
Jacqueline Wilson
Sylvie and Carl have been friends since they were tiny children. They've always played together, eaten meals with each other's families, called each other boyfriend and girlfriend...and deep down, Sylvie has always believed that they'll end up married to each other. They even have a magical fantasy world that belongs to them alone. But as they become teenagers, things begin to change.
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Kiss Number 8
Colleen AF Venable
Mads is pretty happy with her life. She goes to church with her family, and minor league baseball games with her dad. She goofs off with her best friend Cat, and has thus far managed to avoid getting kissed by Adam, the boy next door. It's everything she hoped high school would be... until all of a sudden, it's not. Her dad is hiding something big--so big it could tear her family apart. And that's just the beginning of her problems: Mads is starting to figure out that she doesn't want to kiss Adam... because the only person she wants to kiss is Cat. Just like that, Mad's tidy little life has gotten epically messy--and epically heartbreaking. And when your heart is broken, it takes more than an awkward, uncomfortable, tooth-clashing, friendship-ending kiss to put things right again. It takes a whole bunch of them.
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Koalas on Parade
Brenna Harding and Vicki Harding
A little girl's mothers help her make a koala costume for her school's costume parade. When she finds out that her friend Hannah is also a koala, the two girls dance together in the parade and take home first prize!
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Lady Daisy
Dick King-Smith
Ned's disappointment turns into shock when the doll his grandmother has given him speaks to him, and together the two of them share stories of their very different worlds.
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Large Fears
Myles E. Johnson
Jeremiah Nebula is a black boy who loves pink things and wants to travel to Mars. But in order to reach Mars he has to confront the large fears that stand between him and his goal.
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Last Seen Leaving
Caleb Roehrig
Flynn's girlfriend is missing, and people are suspecting him of knowing something, so he struggles to uncover her secrets as he must also face the truth about himself.
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Laura Dean Keeps Breaking up with me
Mariko Tamaki
Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley's dream girl, but Freddy is learning she is not the best girlfriend, so she seeks help from a mysterious medium and advice columnists to help her through being a teenager in love.
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Laverne Cox
Erin Staley
Highlights the struggles and achievements of Laverne Cox, an American actress, who became the first openly transgender person to win numerous awards and have a wax work in Madame Tussauds.
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Leah On The Offbeat
Becky Albertalli
Leah Burke - girl-band drummer, master of deadpan, and Simon Spier's best friend from the award-winning Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda - takes centre stage in this novel of first love and senior-year angst. When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat - but real life isn't always so rhythmic. An anomaly in her friend group, she's the only child of a young, single mum, and her life is decidedly less privileged. And even though her mom knows she's bisexual, she hasn't mustered the courage to tell her friends - not even her openly gay BFF, Simon. So Leah really doesn't know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high. It's hard for Leah to strike the right note while the people she loves are fighting. Especially when she realises she might love one of them more than she ever intended.
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Learning Seventeen
Brooke Carter
New Hope Academy, or, as seventeen-year-old Jane Learning likes to call it, No Hope, is a Baptist reform school where Jane is currently being held captive. Of course, smart, sarcastic Jane has no interest in reforming, failing to see any benefit to pretending to play well with others. But then Hannah shows up, a gorgeous bad girl with fiery hair and an even stormier disposition. She shows Jane how to live a full and fulfilling life even when the world tells you you're wrong, and how to believe in a future outside the "prison" walls. Jane soon learns, though, that Hannah is quietly battling some demons of her own.
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Legend of Korra: Turf Wars Part One
Michael Dante DiMartino
Relishing their newfound feelings for each other, Korra and Asami leave the Spirit World, but find nothing in Republic City but political hijinks and human vs. spirit conflict. A pompous developer plans to turn the new spirit portal into an amusement park, potentially severing an already tumultuous connection with the spirits. What's more, the triads have realigned and are in a brutal all-out brawl at the city's borders--where hundreds of evacuees have relocated! In order to get through it all, Korra and Asami vow to look out for each other--but first, they've got to get better at being a team and a couple!
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Legend of Korra: Turf Wars Part Three
Michael Dante DiMartino
When Asami is kidnapped, Korra sets out to the Spirit Wilds to find her. Now teeming with dark spirits influenced by the half spirit-half human Tokuga, the landscape is more dangerous than ever before. The two women must trust in each other and work together if they are to make it out alive.
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Legend of Korra: Turf Wars Part Two
Dante DiMartino
Recovering from the fight and furious for revenge, Triple Threats member Tokuga solidifies his ties with the duplicitous Wonyong. Meanwhile, when Republic City's housing crisis reaches its peak, Zhu Li sets her sights on the biggest public figure in the city--President Raiko--in a bid for the presidency! With her friend's success, the future of the spirit portal, and the wellbeing of Republic City's citizens at stake, can Korra remain neutral and fulfill her duties as the Avatar?
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Let's Get This Straight: The Ultimate Handbook for Youth with LGBTQ Parents
Tina Fakhrid-Deen
Offers children, teens, and adults with one or more gay, bisexual, or transgender parents advice on how they can deal with the challenges they might face, build healthy relationships with their parents, address discrimination, build a strong sense of self-esteem, and reduce the isolation and shame they might feel.
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Let's Talk About Love
Claire Kann
In this young adult novel, Alice, afraid of explaining her asexuality, has given up on finding love until love finds her.
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LGBTQ+ Athletes Claim the Field: Striving for Equality
Kirstin Cronn-Mills
In 2015, the world watched as soccer star Abby Wambach kissed her wife after the US women's World Cup victory. Milwaukee Brewers' minor league first baseman David Denson came out as gay. And Caitlyn (born Bruce) Jenner, an Olympic decathlete, came out as transgender. It hasn't always been this way. Many great athletes have stayed in the closet their whole lives, or at least until retirement. Social attitudes, institutional policies, and laws are slow to change, but they are catching up. Together, athletes, families, educators, allies, and fans are pushing for competitive equity so that every athlete, regardless of identity, can have the opportunity to play at their very best.
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LGBTQ Families: The Ultimate Teen Guide (It Happened to Me)
Eva Apelqvist
Children with LGBTQ parents are affected by all issues LGBTQ. This book is designed for inquisitive teens digging for answers about the many challenges they face. Apelqvist offers encouragement, insights, and resources to help them cope with and embrace the uniqueness of their family life.
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Lies My Girlfriend Told Me
Julie Ann Peters
When her girlfriend dies suddenly at age seventeen, Colorado teenager Alix struggles with grief as painful secrets are revealed.
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Lies We Tell Ourselves
Robin Talley
In 1959 Virginia, Sarah, a black student who is one of the first to attend a newly integrated school, forces Linda, a white integration opponent's daughter, to confront harsh truths when they work together on a school project.
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Like Water
Rebecca Podos
When her father is diagnosed with Hungtington's disease, eighteen-year-old Vanni abandons her plan to flee her small New Mexico hometown after high school graduation and instead spends the summer keeping herself busy with part-time jobs and boys, but that changes after she meets Leigh, whose friendship dares Vanni to ask herself big questions and make new plans.
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Lily and Dunkin
Donna Gephart
Lily Jo McGrother, born Timothy McGrother, is a girl. But being a girl is not so easy when you look like a boy. Especially when you’re in the eighth grade. Dunkin Dorfman, birth name Norbert Dorfman, is dealing with bipolar disorder and has just moved from the New Jersey town he’s called home for the past thirteen years. This would be hard enough, but the fact that he is also hiding from a painful secret makes it even worse. One summer morning, Lily Jo McGrother meets Dunkin Dorfman, and their lives forever change.
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Little & Lion
Brandy Colbert
Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her [stepbrother] Lionel fall in love with the same girl, pushing Lionel's bipolar disorder to spin out of control and forcing Suzette to confront her own demons.
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Living in Secret
Cristina Salat
Amelia's mother helps her run away from her father who has custody and establish a new home and identity in San Francisco with her mother's girlfriend.