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.
This collection contains materials from the DIVerse Families bibliography organized by genre.
DIVerse Families is a comprehensive bibliography that demonstrates the growing diversity of families in the United States. This type of bibliography provides teachers, librarians, counselors, adoption agencies, children/young adults, and especially parents and grandparents needing to empower their children with materials that reflect their families.
Browse by Genre:
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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 of Value: Gay and Lesbian Parents and Their Children Speak Out
Jane Drucker
Drawing upon stories by and about nearly two dozen families in which gay fathers and lesbian mothers are raising children in a wide variety of settings and styles, the author defines the meaning of family and discusses concerns such as interpersonal relationships, sexual and psychological development, coming out, facing prejudice, and finding a spiritual foundation, the lesson being that children thrive in an environment of love regardless of the number, gender, or sexual orientation of the adults who provide it.
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Families of Value: Personal Profiles of Pioneering Lesbian and Gay Parents
Robert Bernstein
Families of Value offers a poignant defense of families with same-sex parents. Former attorney and award-winning author Robert Bernstein tells powerful stories of families with gay and lesbian parents who are at the forefront of social change in America. By turns hard-hitting and affecting, these stories portray the resistance these brave parents have faced, their views of the current cultural climate, and, most importantly, the intense passion and dedication that they have demonstrated in the course of raising sound, healthy, and well-adjusted children.
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Finding the Right Spot: When Kids Can't Live with Their Parents
Janice Levy and Whitney Martin
A young girl living with her foster parent describes the emotional ups and downs of being separated from her mother and living in unfamiliar surroundings. Finding the Right Spot is a story for all kids who can't live with their parents, regardless of the circumstances. It's a story about resilience and loyalty, hope and disappointment, love, sadness, and anger, too.
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Fly Little Bird, Fly!: The True Story of Oliver Nordmark & America's Orphan Trains
Donna Nordmark Aviles
Holding tight to one another, vowing never to be separated, Oliver and Edward board the Orphan Train headed west to find a new home.
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Foster Families
Jeanne Barmat
Describes foster home care, the different circumstances which may make it necessary for a child to live with foster parents, and potential problems and their solutions.
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Foster Families
Julianna Fields
Explores the history of foster care, describes the reasons children enter foster care, and discusses foster parents, caseworkers, and the conditions in foster homes.
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Foster Families
Sarah L. Schuette and Gail Saunders-Smith PhD
Simple text and photographs present foster families, including how family members interact with one another.
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Foster Families (Families Today)
Hilary W. Poole
This book looks at how foster families are made and how they might thrive.
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Foster Youth
Leanne Currie-McGhee
Over 400,000 US youth are in foster care, mainly due to neglect and abuse by their parents. These youth endure instability as they move from home to home, and uncertainty about their future as others make the decision as to whether they should be reunited with their families or become available for adoption. Foster Youth presents a powerful, real-world look at the lives of these vulnerable young people.
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Freedom Summer: the 1964 Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi
Susan Goldman Rubin
An account of the civil rights crusade in Mississippi 50 years ago that brought on shocking violence and the beginning of a new political order.
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Gay Power! The Stonewall Riots and the Gay Rights Movement, 1969
Betsy Kuhn
Explores the decades of discrimination and abuse that gay people endured in earlier eras. Also learn how gay people continue to fight for equal rights and recognition.
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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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Hello, Sailor!: The Hidden History of Gay Life at Sea
Paul Baker and Jo Stanley
Explores the meaning of gay life for sea-faring men. This book presents a strand of British history, and tells stories of lives lived against the odds.
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Homelessness in America Today
Jennifer Bringle
Discusses homelessness in the United States, including a brief history, the effects of the recent economic recession on the homelessness rates in the nation, and what can be done to end homelessness.
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How are We the Same and Different?
Bobbie Kalman
We are the same because we are all human beings. We are also the same because we are all different. We have thoughts, ideas, beliefs, talents, and dreams, but how we think and act makes us who we are. This book encourages children to honor their own uniqueness and that of others through new ideas and positive actions.
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How it Feels to Live with a Physical Disability
Jill Krementz
Reveals, through photographs and interviews, the indomitable spirit and strength of children living with such physical disabilities as blindness, cerebral palsy, paralysis, and missing limbs.
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I'm Adopted!
Sheila M. Kelly and Shelly Rotner
Simple text and ample pictures describe what adoption is and how it works.
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International Adoptions
Margaret Haerens
This volume explores the topics relating to the adoption of international children by presenting varied expert opinions that examine many of the different aspects that comprise these issues. The viewpoints are selected from a wide range of highly respected and often hard-to-find sources and publications. Allows the reader to attain the higher-level critical thinking and reading skills that are essential in a culture of diverse and contradictory opinions.
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Intersex
Catherine Harper
Intersex is the condition whereby an individual is born with biological features that are simultaneously perceived as male and female. This book draws on the personal testimony of intersexed individuals, their loved ones and medical carers. It deepens our understanding of a condition that has itself only been medically understood.
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It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living
Dan Savage and Terry Miller
Growing up isn't easy. Many young people face daily tormenting and bullying, and this is especially true for LGBT kids and teens. It Gets Better is a collection of original essays and expanded testimonials written to teens from celebrities, political leaders, and everyday people, because while many LGBT teens can't see a positive future for themselves, we can.
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It's Not the Stork! A Book About Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families, and Friends
Robie H. Harris
Young children are curious about almost everything, especially their bodies. And young children are not afraid to ask questions. What makes me a girl? What makes me a boy? Why are some parts of girls' and boys' bodies the same and why are some parts different? How was I made? Where do babies come from? Is it true that a stork brings babies to mommies and daddies? IT'S NOT THE STORK! helps answer these endless and perfectly normal questions that preschool, kindergarten, and early elementary school children ask about how they began. Through lively, comfortable language and sensitive, engaging artwork, Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley address readers in a reassuring way, mindful of a child's healthy desire for straightforward information. Two irresistible cartoon characters, a curious bird and a squeamish bee, provide comic relief and give voice to the full range of emotions and reactions children may experience while learning about their amazing bodies. Vetted and approved by science, health, and child development experts, the information is up-to-date, age-appropriate, and scientifically accurate, and always aimed at helping kids feel proud, knowledgeable, and comfortable about their own bodies, about how they were born, and about the family they are part of.
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It's So Amazing!: A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families
Robbie H. Harris
Uses bird and bee cartoon characters to present straightforward explanations of topics related to sexual development, love, reproduction, adoption, sexually transmitted diseases, and more.
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Kicked Out
Sassafras Lowrey
This volume is collection of essays written by young people who were kicked out of their homes as minors for identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), as well as a few policy essays from service providers. Diverse contributors ranging in age, experience, and current living situation share stories of perseverance and abuse with poignant accounts of survival. The editors point out that very few urban areas have recognized the need to serve dispossessed LGBT youth by establishing shelters or safe houses; money is tight and public support is often hard to muster. They feel that homelessness of these kids is but a symptom of a larger and more pervasive cultural problem: we are a society that does not value all people, and somehow there seems to be a tacit belief that parents of LGBT youth are entitled to abdicate their responsibility to love and protect the children they have created. They feel that such a mindset is due to a homophobic and transphobic culture. This anthology intends to present the points-of-view of the voiceless and also to challenge the stereotypical face of homelessness.
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Kids are Important: A Book for Young Children in Foster Care
Julie Nelson
Explains to children some of the reasons why a child ends up in foster care.