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.

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Mental Illness

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Scars

Cheryl Rainfield

Fifteen-year-old Kendra, a budding artist, has not felt safe since she began to recall devastating memories of childhood sexual abuse, especially since she cannot remember her abuser's identity, and she copes with the pressure by cutting herself.
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Rachel Stuckey

Presents information about sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as related social issues and ways of dealing with problems that a person may experience due to one's gender and sexual orientation.
Six of Crows

Leigh Bardugo

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price-and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can't pull it off alone... A convict with a thirst for revenge. A sharpshooter who can't walk away from a wager. A runaway with a privileged past. A spy known as the Wraith. A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums. A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes. Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz's crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction-if they don't kill each other first.
Small Things

Mel Tregonning

In this wordless graphic picture book, a young boy feels alone with his worries. He isn't fitting in well at school. His grades are slipping. He's even lashing out at those who love him. This short but hard-hitting wordless graphic picture book gets to the heart of childhood anxiety and opens the way for dialogue about acceptance, vulnerability, and the universal experience of worry.
Some Kind of Happiness

Claire Legrand

Finley Hart is sent to her grandparents' house for the summer, but her overwhelmingly sad days continue until she escapes into her writings, which soon turn mysteriously real as she realises she must save this magical world in order to save herself.
Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry

Bebe Moore Campbell

A little girl learns coping skills with the help of her grandmother, neighbors and school friends, when her mother's mental illness disrupts her daily routine.
Stuck with the Blooz

Caron Levis

When a monster named the Blooz comes to visit, a child copes with emotions in this whimsical debut picture book about having--and getting rid of--the blues.
The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza

Shaun David Hutchinson

Elena, the first scientifically confirmed virgin birth, acquires the ability to heal by touch at age sixteen, the same year that people start disappearing in beams of light, causing her to wonder if she is bringing about the Apocalypse.
The Art of Starving

Sam J. Miller

Matt hasn’t eaten in days. His stomach stabs and twists inside, pleading for a meal, but Matt won’t give in. The hunger clears his mind, keeps him sharp—and he needs to be as sharp as possible if he’s going to find out just how Tariq and his band of high school bullies drove his sister, Maya, away. Matt’s hardworking mom keeps the kitchen crammed with food, but Matt can resist the siren call of casseroles and cookies because he has discovered something: the less he eats the more he seems to have...powers. The ability to see things he shouldn’t be able to see. The knack of tuning in to thoughts right out of people’s heads. Maybe even the authority to bend time and space. So what is lunch, really, compared to the secrets of the universe? Matt decides to infiltrate Tariq’s life, then use his powers to uncover what happened to Maya. All he needs to do is keep the hunger and longing at bay. No problem. But Matt doesn’t realize there are many kinds of hunger...and he isn’t in control of all of them.
The Crazy Man

Pamela Porter

It is 1965, and 12-year-old Emaline, living on a wheat farm, must deal with a family that is falling apart. When her dog, Prince, chases a hare into the path of the tractor, she chases after him, and her father accidentally runs over her leg, leaving her with a long convalescence and a permanent disability. Even worse, from Emaline’s point of view, is that in his grief and guilt, her father shoots Prince and leaves Emaline and her mother on their own. Despite the neighbors’ disapproval, Emaline’s mother hires Angus, a patient from the local mental hospital, to work their fields. Angus is a red-haired giant whom the local children tease and call "the gorilla." Though the small town’s prejudice creates a cloud of suspicion around Angus that nearly results in tragedy, he just may hold the key to Emaline's coming to grips with her injury and the loss of her father.
The Face at the Window

Regina Hanson

When Dora goes to take a mango from Miss Nella's tree, she is frightened by the woman's strange behavior.
The Gravity of Us

Phil Stamper

When his volatile father is picked to become an astronaut for NASA's mission to Mars, seventeen-year-old Cal, an aspiring journalist, reluctantly moves from Brooklyn to Houston, Texas, and looks for a story to report, finding an ally (and crush) in Leon, the son of another astronaut.
The Naming of Tishkin Silk

Glenda Millard

The first book in the Kingdom of Silk series. Griffin has a secret in his heart that nobody else knows - until he meets Layla., a princess with a daisy-chain crown.
The Notations of Cooper Cameron

Jane O'Reilly

At the family cabin by the lake where his grandfather died two years ago, eleven-year-old Cooper Cameron spends the summer trying to rid himself of the rituals that allow him to cope with his grief and fear.
The Science of Breakable Things

Tae Keller

Middle schooler Natalie's year-long assignment to answer a question using the scientific process leads to truths about her mother's depression and her own cultural identity.
The Someday Birds

Sally J. Pla

Charlie, twelve, who has autism and obsessive compulsive disorder, must endure a cross-country trip with his siblings and a strange babysitter to visit their father, who will undergo brain surgery.
The Stars at Oktober Bend

Glenda Millard

Alice is fifteen, with hair as red as fire and skin as pale as bone. Something inside Alice is broken: she remembers words but struggles to speak them. Still, Alice knows words are for sharing, so she pins them to posters in tucked-away places: railway waiting rooms, fish-and-chip shops, quiet corners. Manny is sixteen, with a scar from shoulder to elbow. Something inside Manny is broken: he was once a child soldier, forced to do terrible, violent things. But in a new land with new people who will care for him, he spends time exploring on foot. And in his pocket, he carries a poem he scooped up. And he knows the words by heart. When Manny and Alice meet, their relationship brings the beginning of love and healing.
The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B

Teresa Toten

Adam not only is trying to understand his OCD, while trying to balance his relationship with his divorced parents, but he's also trying to navigate through the issues that teenagers normally face, namely the perils of young love--
The War That Saved My Life

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

A young disabled girl and her brother are evacuated from London to the English countryside during World War II, where they find life to be much sweeter away from their abusive mother.
The Weight of Our Sky

Hanna Alkaf

Amidst the Chinese-Malay conflict in Kuala Lumpur in 1969, sixteen-year-old Melati must overcome prejudice, violence, and her own OCD to find her way back to her mother.
The Year I Didn't Eat

Samuel Pollen

Fourteen-year-old Max records his efforts to control his anorexia in a therapist-prescribed journal that also chronicles his parents' difficult relationship and his feelings for a new girl at school, Evie.
Three Little Words

Sarah N. Harvey

When Sid leaves his foster family on their remote island home in search of the mother he doesn't remember and a brother he's never met, he's ill-prepared for the surprises he finds.
Top Ten

Katie Cotugno

Ryan McCullough and Gabby Hart are the unlikeliest of best friends. Prickly, anxious Gabby would rather do literally anything than go to a party. Ultra-popular Ryan is a hockey star who can get any girl he wants and frequently does. But somehow their relationship just works; from dorky Monopoly nights to rowdy house parties to the top ten lists they make about everything under the sun. Now, on the night of high school graduation, everything is suddenly changing--in their lives, and in their relationship. As they try to figure out what they mean to each other and where to go from here, they make a final top ten list: this time, counting down the top ten moments of their friendship.
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.
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.