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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Mysterious Traveler
Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham
Desert guide Issa finds the baby girl Mariama after a sandstorm, and raises her as his own daughter--until a young man and his protectors come seeking a guide for their dangerous journey through the Bitter Mountains.
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My Tiki Girl
Jennifer McMahon
Fifteen-year-old Maggie, still grieving the loss of her mother in an accident that also gave her a limp, has turned her back on old friends but connects with a new student, Dahlia, who makes her part of her quirky family and plans their future together as roving musicians and lovers.
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Nathan's Wish: A Story About Cerebral Palsy
Laurie Lears
A boy with cerebral palsy helps out at a raptor rehabilitation center and is inspired himself when an owl that cannot fly finds another purpose in life.
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New Hands, New Life: Robots, Prostheses, and Innovation
Alex Mihailidis and Jan Andrysek
This book covers how advances in science and technology have made it possible for people with physical disabilities to overcome challenges.
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Nice Wheels
Gwendolyn Hooks
The classmates of a new boy at school find that, although he is in a wheelchair, he can do what they do.
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No Way to Run
Janice Greene
A jewelry store robber discovers the amazing abilities of the disabled young woman who witnessed his crime.
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On Being Sarah
Elizabeth S. Helfman
Twelve-year-old Sarah Bennett, a young victim of cerebral palsy, yearns to become a part of the "normal" world, and she gets her chance when she is mainstreamed into a regular school, makes a new best friend, and learns to come to terms with her special challenge.
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One-Handed Catch
Mary Jane Auch
After losing his hand in an accident in his father's butcher shop in 1946, sixth-grader Norman uses hard work and humor to learn to live with his disability and to succeed at baseball, art, and other activities.
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One TV Blasting and a Pig Outdoors
Deborah Abbott and Henry Kisor
What’s it like to have a deaf father? As Conan explains, it’s not so different—but it’s always interesting. Conan tells how his father Henry Kisor learned to read and speak, made his way through “regular” schools, and grew up to be a newspaper editor and author. Conan also describes the challenges of lipreading and the technological advances that have made communication easier for his dad.
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Out of My Mind
Sharon M. Draper
Melody is not like most people. She cannot walk or talk, but she has a photographic memory. She can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. She is smarter than most of the adults who try to diagnose her and smarter than her classmates in her integrated classroom, the very same classmates who dismiss her as mentally challenged, because she cannot tell them otherwise. Melody refuses to be defined by cerebral palsy, and she's determined to let everyone know it, somehow.
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Owning It: Stories About Teens with Disabilities
Donald R. Gallo
Presents ten stories of teenagers facing all of the usual challenges of school, parents, boyfriends and girlfriends, plus the additional complications that come with having a physical or psychological disability.
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Peace, Locomotion
Jacqueline Woodson
Through letters to his little sister, who is living in a different foster home, sixth-grader Lonnie, also known as "Locomotion," keeps a record of their lives while they are apart, describing his own foster family, including his foster brother who returns home after losing a leg in the Iraq War.
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People with Disabilities
Hayley Mitchell Haugen
This volume provides an overview of people with disabilities in the United States, a chronology of important events, an annotated bibliography, and other resources for conducting further research. The author illuminates this often-neglected human side of these problems by presenting a collection of personal narratives of people who have had personal experience with physical and mental disabilities as participants, witnesses, or involved professionals.
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People with Disabilities (What Do You Know About It)
Pete Sanders and Steve Myers
Discusses what it means to have a physical impairment or learning disability and the effects of such challenges on the disabled person and those around him.
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Petey
Ben Mikaelsen
In 1922, at the age of two, Petey's distraught parents commit him to the state's insane asylum, unaware that their son is actually suffering from severe cerebral palsy. Bound by his wheelchair and struggling to communicate with the people around him, Petey finds a way to remain kind and generous despite the horrific conditions in his new "home." Through the decades, he befriends several caretakers but is heartbroken when each eventually leaves him. Determined not to be hurt again, he vows to no longer let hope of lifelong friends and family torment him. That changes after he is moved into a nursing home and meets a young teen named Trevor Ladd; he sees something in the boy and decides to risk friendship one last time. Trevor, new to town and a bit of a loner, is at first weary of the old man in the wheelchair. But after hearing more of his story, Trevor learns that there is much more to Petey than meets the eye.
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Postcards to Father Abraham
Catherine Lewis
When sixteen-year-old Meghan loses her leg to cancer and her brother to Vietnam, she expresses intense anger in postcards which she writes to her idol, Abraham Lincoln.
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Probably the World's Best Story About a Dog and the Girl Who Loved Me
D. J. Smith
Paolo's plan for August in Orange Grove City is to hire out his little brother to the neighbors. Georgie is six; he needs a manager. But then the family dog, Rufus, is stolen. Overnight, Paolo is trying to manage not just Georgie, but their deaf cousin, Billy, who speaks only with his hands; Henry, a strange vacation visitor whom the boys discover living locked in his aunt's attic; and Butter Schwartz, a lonely, half-wild schemer with a paper route. The last two are definite dognapping suspects...To top it all, a girl with a big-time crush on Paolo won't let him be, day or night, crisis or no crisis. For her, missing Rufus is nothing to snaring Paolo, who has met his match as a manager. The solution to the mystery of Rufus, the threat of Theresa, and the future must rest in Billy's hands.
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Push Girl
Chelsie Hill and Jessica Love
Kara, a high school junior, is popular with a great group of friends, an amazing boyfriend, and expectations of being Homecoming Queen until she leaves a party angry and wakes up in a hospital bed, paralized from the waist down, but as she is forced to adjust to her new physical reality, she also learns that her friends are not who they seemed to be.
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Rainbow Joe and Me
Maria Diaz Strom
Eloise shares her love of colors with her blind friend Rainbow Joe, who makes his own colors when he plays beautiful notes on his saxophone.
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Red Butterfly
A. L. Sonnichsen
A young orphaned girl in modern-day China discovers the meaning of family in this inspiring story told in verse, in the tradition of Inside Out and Back Again and Sold. Kara never met her birth mother. Abandoned as an infant, she was taken in by an American woman living in China. Now eleven, Kara spends most of her time in their apartment, wondering why she and Mama cannot leave the city of Tianjin and go live with Daddy in Montana. Mama tells Kara to be content with what she has -- but what if Kara secretly wants more? Told in lyrical, moving verse, Red Butterfly is the story of a girl learning to trust her own voice, discovering that love and family are limitless, and finding the wings she needs to reach new heights.
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Rescue and Jessica
Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes
Rescue thought he’d grow up to be a Seeing Eye dog — it’s the family business, after all. When he gets the news that he’s better suited to being a service dog, he’s worried that he’s not up to the task. Then he meets Jessica, a girl whose life is turning out differently than the way she'd imagined it, too. Now Jessica needs Rescue by her side to help her accomplish everyday tasks. And it turns out that Rescue can help Jessica see after all: a way forward, together, one step at a time. An endnote from the authors tells more about the training and extraordinary abilities of service dogs, particularly their real-life best friend and black lab, Rescue.
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Revenge and the Wild
Michelle Modesto
The two-bit town of Rogue City is a lawless place, full of dark magic and saloon brawls, monsters and six-shooters. But it’s just perfect for seventeen-year-old Westie, the notorious adopted daughter of local inventor Nigel Butler.
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Rolling Along with Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Cindy Meyers
In this updated version of a familiar folktale, baby bear gets around in a wheelchair and has a motorized bed which fascinate Goldilocks when she becomes friends with him after her surprise visit to the three bears' house.
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Roxy the Raccoon: A Story to Help Children Learn about Disability and Inclusion
Alice Reeves
Roxy lives in the forest with her three best friends, who she loves to visit and play games with. Roxy is in a wheelchair, so sometimes it is harder for her to go to the same places and play the same games as the other animals. Roxy and her friends realise that by making a few small changes and working together, they can make the forest a better place for everyone. Roxy teaches us that there are bunches of ways to be more inclusive of those who have a disability so that everyone can join in.
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Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything
Lenore Look
After Ruby Lu's deaf cousin, Flying Duck, and her parents come from China to live with her, Ruby finds life challenging as she adjusts to her new family, tries to mend her rocky relationship with her friend Emma, and faces various adventures in summer school.