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 Health & Disability:
Physical Disability
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Beast
Brie Spangler
After falling off the roof, fifteen-year-old misfit Dylan must attend a therapy group for self-harmers where he meets Jamie, a beautiful and amazing person he does not know is transgender.
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Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability
Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, and Michael Northen
Beauty is a verb is the first of its kind: a high-quality anthology of poetry by American poets with physical disabilities. Poems and essays alike consider how poetry, coupled with the experience of disability, speaks to the poetics of each poet included. The collection explores first the precursors whose poems had a complex (and sometimes absent) relationship with disability, such as Vassar Miller, Larry Eigner, and Josephine Miles. It continues with poets who have generated the Crip Poetics Movement, such as Petra Kuppers, Kenny Fries, and Jim Ferris. Finally, the collection explores the work of poets who don't necessarily subscribe to the identity of "crip-poetics" and have never before been published in this exact context. These poets include Bernadette Mayer, Rusty Morrison, Cynthia Hogue, and C.S. Giscombe. The book crosses poetry movements--from narrative to language poetry--and speaks to and about a number of disabilities including cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, multiple sclerosis, and aphasia due to stroke, among others.
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Beauty Queens
Libba Bray
The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream Pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner. What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program - or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan - or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?
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Becoming Naomi León
Pam Muñoz Ryan
Naomi Soledad León Outlaw has had a lot to contend with in her young life, her name for one. Then there are her clothes (sewn in polyester by Gram), her difficulty speaking up, and her status at school as "nobody special." But according to Gram's self-prophecies, most problems can be overcome with positive thinking. Luckily, Naomi also has her carving to strengthen her spirit. And life with Gram and her little brother, Owen, is happy and peaceful. That is, until their mother reappears for the first time in seven years, stirring up all sorts of questions and challenging Naomi to discover who she really is.
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Benny Doesn't Like to Be Hugged
Zetta Elliott
A little girl uses rhyming verse to describe the unique traits of her autistic friend. Benny likes trains and cupcakes without sprinkles, but he can also be fussy sometimes. The narrator doesn’t mind, however, because “true friends accept each other just the way they are.” A gentle story encouraging children to appreciate and accept our differences.
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Between Mom and Jo
Julie Anne Peters
Nick has a three-legged dog named Lucky, some pet fish, and two moms who think he's the greatest kid ever. And he happens to think he has the greatest Moms ever, but everything changes when his birth mom and her wife, Jo, start to have marital problems. Suddenly, Nick is in the middle, and instead of having two Moms to turn to for advice, he has no one.
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Blabber Mouth
Morris Gleitzman
Rowena Batts is hiding in a cupboard after having stuffed a frog into Darryn Peck's mouth. But she has a bigger problem that involves her dad, his shirts, and his habit of singing in public. How can she tell him these things are wrecking her life?
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Brian's Bird
Patricia Anne Davis and Layne Johnson
Eight-year-old Brian, who is blind, learns how to take care of his new parakeet and comes to realize that his older brother, while sometimes careless, is not so bad after all.
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Catherine's Story
Genevieve Moore
What makes Catherine so special? She can't talk, she can't walk like her cousin Frances can. But Catherine listens very hard (hardly anyone does that), and she can walk in her special shoes, but when Frances tries, she just falls over! And her claps are so quiet that hardly anyone can hear them. These are the things that make Catherine special and, because her family knows how special she is, this makes them feel special too. This is the story of a child born with severe additional needs that focusses on the special nature of her abilities.
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Chang and the Bamboo Flute
Elizabeth Starr Hill
Chang, a mute Chinese boy whose father uses cormorants to fish, becomes a hero when a heavy rain strands his father's fishing raft.
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Circle
Jeannie Baker
Follows the migration of the bar-tailed godwits from Australia and New Zealand to their breeding grounds in the Arctic.
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Collateral Damage
Patrick Jones and Brent Chartier
Ty is very proud of his father's accomplishments as a U.S. Army sargeant, but when a brain injury and partial paralysis send his father home from Afghanistan in a wheelchair, Ty finds it hard to balance schoolwork, basketball, a girlfriend, and friends with the time and effort required to care for him.
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Colt
Nancy Springer
A young boy with a crippling disease learns, through a horseback riding program, to overcome his own anxieties and to help others in dealing with their own problems.
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Compromised
Heidi Ayarbe
With her con-man father in prison, fifteen-year-old Maya sets out from Reno, Nevada, for Boise, Idaho, hoping to stay out of foster care by finding an aunt she never knew existed, but a fellow runaway complicates all of her scientifically-devised plans.
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Crazy Beautiful
Lauren Baratz-Logsted
In this contemporary retelling of "Beauty and the Beast," a teenaged boy whose hands were amputated in an explosion and a gorgeous girl whose mother has recently died form an instant connection when they meet on their first day as new students.
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Curious George Joins the Team
Cynthia Platt
While on a playdate with his new friend, Tina, who uses a wheelchair, George sees some kids playing basketball and jumps right into the action, but Tina is too shy to join in, even though he knows she is a great player.
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Cursed
Karol Ruth Silverstein
Depicts young teen Ricky Bloom's struggles with her recent juvenile inflammatory disease diagnosis, which comes amid family upheaval and challenges at school.
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Dachy's Deaf
Jack Hughes
Dachy wears a hearing aid. But sometimes, when his friends get too noisy, he likes to turn it off to get some peace and quiet. One day, when his hearing aid is off, Dachy falls asleep and ends up floating down the river towards a waterfall and a hungry crocodile. Can his friends rescue him in time?
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Dad, Jackie, and Me
Myron Uhlberg
In Brooklyn, New York, in 1947, a boy learns about discrimination and tolerance as he and his deaf father share their enthusiasm over baseball and the Dodgers' first baseman, Jackie Robinson.
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Dancing with Katya
Dori Chaconas
In the late 1920s, Anna tries to help her younger sister Katya regain her strength and joy in life after she becomes crippled by polio.
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Dangerous
Shannon Hale
When aspiring astronaut Maisie Danger Brown, who was born without a right hand, and the other space camp students get the opportunity to do something amazing in space, Maisie must prove how dangerous she can be and how far she is willing to go to protect everything she has ever loved.
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Days with Dad
Nari Hong
A young girl and her wheelchair-bound father share many special moments because she treasures all they can do together, although he apologizes for not being able to do more.
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Dear Rachel Maddow
Adrienne Kisner
Brianna gets the lead in the Thanksgiving school play. She'll be Hero the Hen! She almost forgets about the coughing and breathing trouble she's been having.Brianna loves practicing her leaping and flapping. But at the dress rehearsal, she has a bad coughing attack and feels a tightness in her chest. The teacher calls 911 and the paramedics take Brianna to the hospital. There, Dr. Anderson diagnoses Brianna with asthma. Brianna begins to learn about her disease and how to manage it. Things are soon under control, and she's back on stage for her debut!
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Dear Santa, Please Come to the 19th Floor
Yin .
Willy and Carlos, who is in a wheelchair, receive a visit from Santa on Christmas Eve, even though they live on the nineteenth floor of their building.
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Dirt
Denise Orenstein
Eleven-year-old Yonder stopped talking when her mother died, and she stopped going to school because of the bullies, knowing that her father would never even notice (although the social worker did); indeed the only creature that seems to care about her is the one-eyed Shetland pony called Dirt who lives on the neighboring farm--so when she discovers that Dirt is about to be sold for horsemeat she is determined to find a way to save him.