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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True Letters from a Fictional Life
Kenneth Logan
If you asked anyone in his small Vermont town, they'd tell you the facts: James Liddell, star athlete, decent student, and sort-of boyfriend to cute, peppy Theresa, is a happy, funny, carefree guy. But whenever James sits down at his desk to write, he tells a different story. As he fills his drawers with letters to the people in his world -- letters he never intends to send -- he spills the truth: he's trying hard, but he just isn't into Theresa. It's his friend, a boy, who lingers in his thoughts. James's secret letters are his safe space -- but his truth can't stay hidden for long. Will he come clean to his parents, his teammates, and himself, or is he destined to live a life of fiction?
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Tuesday with Mommy and Pterodactyis
Phylliss DelGreco, Jaclyn Roth, and Kathryn Silverio
In "Tuesday with Mommy...and Pterodactyls," Jessie visits the big museum in the city and is completely shocked to see that real dinosaurs are much larger and more frightening than her dinosaur toys at home. With Mommy’s help, Jessie makes parallels between the dinosaurs and herself, and is able not only to overcome her fears, but also to soar with her favorites, the pterodactyls. "Tuesday with Mommy...and Pterodactyls" is the second book in The Jessie Books series, which offers an inspiring story for each day of the week, featuring a precocious little girl who lives with her two moms in Queens, New York.
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Tutus Aren't My Style
Linda Skeers
When she receives a ballerina costume from her uncle, Emma, who does not know how to be a ballerina, gets a lot of advice from friends and family.
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Two Boys Kissing
David Levithan
A chorus of men who died of AIDS observes and yearns to help a cross-section of today's gay teens who navigate new love, long-term relationships, coming out, self-acceptance, and more in a society that has changed in many ways.
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Two Dads: A Book About Adoption
Carolyn Robertson
Having two dads is double the fun! Many families are different. This family has two dads. A beautifully illustrated, affirming story of life with two dads, written from the perspective of their adopted child.
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Two Moms, the Zark, and Me
Johnny Valentine
A young child with two moms, a playful animal called a zark, and the narrow-minded McFinks all come together in this whimsical story that looks at just what a family is all about.
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Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath
Steven Goldman
Mitch, a shy and awkward high school junior, negotiates the difficult social situations he encounters, both with girls and with his best friend David, after David reveals to him that he is gay.
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Tyler Buckspan
Jere' M. Fishback
Fifteen-year-old Tyler Buckspan lives with his mom and grandmother in 1960s Cassadaga, a Florida community where spiritual "mediums" ply their trade. The mediums--Tyler's grandmother among them--read palms and tarot cards, conduct seances and speak with the dead. Tyler's a loner, a bookish boy with few interests, until his half-brother Devin, nineteen and a convicted arsonist, comes to live in Tyler's home. For years, Tyler has ignored his attraction to other boys. But with Devin in the house, Tyler can't deny his urges any longer. He falls hopelessly in love with his miscreant half-brother, and with the sport of basketball, once Devin teaches Tyler the finer points of the game. In a time when love between men was forbidden, even criminalized, can Tyler find the love he needs from another boy? And is Devin a person to be trusted? Is he truly clairvoyant, or simply a con artist playing Tyler and others for fools? What does Devin really know about a local murder? And can Tyler trust his own psychic twinges?
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Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain
Portia de Rossi
Known for her roles on the hit TV shows "Ally McBeal" and "Arrested Development," de Rossi delivers a revelatory and searing account of the years she spend secretly suffering from bulimia, all the while living under the glare of Hollywood's bright lights.
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Unbecoming
Jenny Downham
Life has just become very complicated for seventeen-year-old Katie; her father walked out a year ago, her mother is stressed out, her brother is a "special needs" teenager, and she is caring for the maternal grandmother she has never met, who is suffering from Alzheimer's--and Katie has a secret of her own that she cannot reveal.
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Unbroken
Marieke Nijkamp
This anthology explores disability in fictional tales told from the viewpoint of disabled characters, written by disabled creators. With stories in various genres about first loves, friendship, war, travel, and more, Unbroken will offer today's teen readers a glimpse into the lives of disabled people in the past, present, and future.
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Uncle Aiden
Laurel Dykstra
The chrming story of why every little girl needs a gay uncle! Anna Maria and her Uncle Aiden share their love of pretty things, tea parties and baseball - but most of all they share their love of each other.
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Uncle Bobby's Wedding
Sarah S. Brannen
Chloë is jealous and sad when her favorite uncle announces that he will be getting married, but as she gets to know Jamie better and becomes involved in planning the wedding, she discovers that she will always be special to Uncle Bobby--and to Uncle Jamie, too.
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Uncle What-Is-It is Coming to Visit!!
Michael Willhoite
Igor and Tiffany have never met their homosexual uncle who is coming to visit, and become concerned when some of the older kids try to scare them with gay stereotypes.
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Unreachable
Katie Leone
Janice Rosenthal is entering her eighth year of teaching, but it might be her last. Never before has she had a student as unruly and insubordinate as this one. Andrew Bryant is the terror of seventh grade, a student known for driving teachers to the edge of retirement, and he is in her class. How can Janice--and the rest of her students--make it through the school year with such a disruptive force in the classroom? Her only hope is to try to break through the orphan's defenses, to pierce a wall that no other teacher has ever scratched. When she discovers Andrew's secret, two lives will be changed forever.
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Unspoken (The Lynburn Legacy #1)
Sarah Rees Brennan
Kami Glass is in love with someone she's never met--a boy she's talked to in her head since she was born. This has made her an outsider in the sleepy English town of Sorry-in-the-Vale, but she has learned ways to turn that to her advantage. Her life seems to be in order, until disturbing events begin to occur. There has been screaming in the woods and the manor overlooking the town has lit up for the first time in 10 years. The Lynburn family, who ruled the town a generation ago and who all left without warning, have returned. Now Kami can see that the town she has known and loved all her life is hiding a multitude of secrets--and a murderer. The key to it all just might be the boy in her head. The boy she thought was imaginary is real, and definitely and deliciously dangerous.
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Vengeance Road
Erin Bowman
When Kate Thompson’s father is killed by the notorious Rose Riders for a mysterious journal that reveals the secret location of a gold mine, the eighteen-year-old disguises herself as a boy and takes to the gritty plains looking for answers and justice. What she finds are devious strangers, dust storms, and a pair of brothers who refuse to quit riding in her shadow. But as Kate gets closer to the secrets about her family, she gets closer to the truth about herself and must decide if there's room for love in a heart so full of hate.
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Vintage: A Ghost Story
Steve Berman
A lonely seventeen-year-old who has dreamed of meeting a different and special boy desperately seeks help from his friend Trace, a Goth girl, to free him from the clutches of a handsome ghost he has met on a rural New Jersey highway.
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Wandering Son, Vol. 1 (Wandering Son #1)
Takako Shimura
The fifth grade. The threshold to puberty, and the beginning of the end of childhood innocence. Shuichi Nitori and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki have happy homes, loving families, and are well-liked by their classmates. But they share a secret that further complicates a time of life that is awkward for anyone : Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy.
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Wandering Son, Vol. 2 (Wandering Son #2)
Takako Shimura
In the second volume of Shimura Takako's superb coming-of-age story, our transgendered protagonists, Shuichi and Yoshino, have entered the sixth grade. Shuichi spends a precious gift of cash from his grandmother on a special present for himself, a purchase that triggers a chain of events in which his sister Maho learns his secret, and Shuichi inadvertently steals the heart of a boy Maho in interested in.
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Wandering Son, Vol. 3 (Wandering Son #3)
Takako Shimura
Shuichi and his friend Yoshino have a secret: Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy. But one day, abruptly, their secret is exposed, and the two find themselves the target of sixth-grade cruelty. Their friendship is strained, as Yoshino makes a half-hearted effort at being a 'normal girl'-- and their mentor, Yuki, reveals the harder reality of being transgendered. Meanwhile, Shuichi's sister, Maho, realizes her dream of becoming a model, and drags Shuichi along for the ride. Shuichi meets another boy who wants to be a girl, and finds himself on an arranged date with a boy who doesn't know that the girl he has a crush on is actually a boy.
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Wandering Son, Vol. 4 (Wandering Son #4)
Takako Shimura
Two Japanese tweens who find themselves coping with the knotty issue of gender identification, as they slowly realize that maybe they aren't who they were meant to be.
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Wandering Son, Vol. 5 (Wandering Son #5)
Takako Shimura
Shuichi, a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino, a girl who wants to be a boy, become friends in junior high school, where they tackle problems such as gender identity, love, social acceptance, and puberty.
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Wandering Son, Vol. 6 (Wandering Son #6)
Takako Shimura
Faced with unwanted changes to their growing bodies, male-identified Takatsuki-san discovers the wonders of "breast binders," and female-identified Nitori-kun explores the limits of his ability to "pass."
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Wandering Son, Vol. 7 (Wandering Son #7)
Takako Shimura
Nitori-kun gets his first signs of acne. This may well be the end of the world. But when he turns to nationally famous model Anna-chan for help, events take an unexpected turn. Meanwhile, Nitori-kun and Chiba-san are scouted by the theater club after the success of their gender-bending play, The Rose of Versailles. But when Takatsuki-san congratulates Chiba-san, Chiba-san calls her a hypocrite. If Takatsuki-san wanted to join the theater club, she wouldn't congratulate Chiba-san -- she'd be jealous. So says Chiba-san, but what does she know?