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:
-
Kinda Like Brothers
Coe Booth
When his mother takes in a twelve-year-old foster boy, Jarrett is forced to share his room and his friends with the new boy.
-
King for a Day
Rukhsana Khan
Even though he is confined to a wheelchair, a Pakistani boy tries to capture the most kites during Basant, the annual spring kite festival, and become "king" for the day. Includes an afterword about the Basant festival.
-
King of the Screwups
K.L. Going
After getting in trouble yet again, popular high school senior Liam, who never seems to live up to his wealthy father's expectations, is sent to live in a trailer park with his gay "glam-rocker" uncle.
-
Kiss
Jacqueline Wilson
Sylvie and Carl have been friends since they were tiny children. They've always played together, eaten meals with each other's families, called each other boyfriend and girlfriend...and deep down, Sylvie has always believed that they'll end up married to each other. They even have a magical fantasy world that belongs to them alone. But as they become teenagers, things begin to change.
-
Kiss Number 8
Colleen AF Venable
Mads is pretty happy with her life. She goes to church with her family, and minor league baseball games with her dad. She goofs off with her best friend Cat, and has thus far managed to avoid getting kissed by Adam, the boy next door. It's everything she hoped high school would be... until all of a sudden, it's not. Her dad is hiding something big--so big it could tear her family apart. And that's just the beginning of her problems: Mads is starting to figure out that she doesn't want to kiss Adam... because the only person she wants to kiss is Cat. Just like that, Mad's tidy little life has gotten epically messy--and epically heartbreaking. And when your heart is broken, it takes more than an awkward, uncomfortable, tooth-clashing, friendship-ending kiss to put things right again. It takes a whole bunch of them.
-
KNOCK KNOCK My Dad's Dream for Me
Daniel Beaty
A boy wakes up one morning to find his father gone. At first, he feels lost. But his father has left him a letter filled with advice to guide him through the times he cannot be there.
-
Koalas on Parade
Brenna Harding and Vicki Harding
A little girl's mothers help her make a koala costume for her school's costume parade. When she finds out that her friend Hannah is also a koala, the two girls dance together in the parade and take home first prize!
-
Kofi's Mom
Richard W. Dyches
Kofi's Mom is a story about Kofi whose mother is sent to prison. It explores his feelings of loss and confusion. Through friends at school, Kofi begins to talk about his mom and to look forward to her return.
-
Kyle's Island
Sally Derby
For as far back as Kyle can remember, he spent summers at Gram's cottage on the lake—fishing all day, and hanging out with the whole family. But this year is different. His father has moved out, his grandmother has died, and his mother is selling the cottage because they can't afford the upkeep. Sally Derby takes readers to a small lake in 1970s Michigan, where thirteen-year-old Kyle comes to understand that loss isn't forever, and that people are more complicated than they seem.
-
Lailah's Lunchbox
Reem Faruqi
Now that she is ten, Lailah is delighted that she can fast during the month of Ramadan like her family and her friends in Abu Dhabi, but finding a way to explain to her teacher and classmates in Atlanta is a challenge until she gets some good advice from the librarian, Mrs. Carman.
-
Last Seen Leaving
Caleb Roehrig
Flynn's girlfriend is missing, and people are suspecting him of knowing something, so he struggles to uncover her secrets as he must also face the truth about himself.
-
Last Stop on Market Street
Matt de la Peña
CJ begins his weekly bus journey around the city with disappointment and dissatisfaction, wondering why he and his family can't drive a car like his friends. Through energy and encouragement, CJ's nana helps him see the beauty and fun in their routine.
-
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking up with me
Mariko Tamaki
Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley's dream girl, but Freddy is learning she is not the best girlfriend, so she seeks help from a mysterious medium and advice columnists to help her through being a teenager in love.
-
Laurie
Elfi Nijssen
Laurie is a little girl who would love to be like other children, but her hearing problems can make that difficult, until she goes to the ear doctor and gets new hearing aids that allow her to hear things around her clearly.
-
Laurie Tells
Linda Lowery
When her mother doesn't believe her, eleven-year-old Laurie tells a supportive aunt that she is being sexually abused by her father
-
Leading Ladies
Marlee Matlin and Doug Cooney
A deaf fourth-grader finds her true calling when she is cast as Dorothy in a school production of "The Wizard of Oz."
-
Leah On The Offbeat
Becky Albertalli
Leah Burke - girl-band drummer, master of deadpan, and Simon Spier's best friend from the award-winning Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda - takes centre stage in this novel of first love and senior-year angst. When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat - but real life isn't always so rhythmic. An anomaly in her friend group, she's the only child of a young, single mum, and her life is decidedly less privileged. And even though her mom knows she's bisexual, she hasn't mustered the courage to tell her friends - not even her openly gay BFF, Simon. So Leah really doesn't know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high. It's hard for Leah to strike the right note while the people she loves are fighting. Especially when she realises she might love one of them more than she ever intended.
-
Learning Seventeen
Brooke Carter
New Hope Academy, or, as seventeen-year-old Jane Learning likes to call it, No Hope, is a Baptist reform school where Jane is currently being held captive. Of course, smart, sarcastic Jane has no interest in reforming, failing to see any benefit to pretending to play well with others. But then Hannah shows up, a gorgeous bad girl with fiery hair and an even stormier disposition. She shows Jane how to live a full and fulfilling life even when the world tells you you're wrong, and how to believe in a future outside the "prison" walls. Jane soon learns, though, that Hannah is quietly battling some demons of her own.
-
Less Than Half, More Than Whole
Kathleen Lacapa and Michael Lapaca
A child who is only part Native American is troubled by his mixed racial heritage.
-
Let's Talk About Love
Claire Kann
In this young adult novel, Alice, afraid of explaining her asexuality, has given up on finding love until love finds her.
-
Letters from the Heart
Annie Bryant
A family history project for school is giving the Beacon Street Girls a lot to think about -- especially Avery. She's got three families: her mother and brothers at home, her father in Colorado, and the birth mother she never really knew. But family is an uncomfortable subject for Maeve. Her parents have just separated, and she doesn't want to talk about it to anyone, not even her best friends in the world, the BSG. Can a bundle of old letters make Maeve see her family in a new light and give her something to share with the Beacon Street Girls?
-
Levi's Family (All Kinds of Families)
Elliot Riley
Easy reader introduces a foster child and his foster parents, highlighting their family dynamics and adoption.
-
Liars, Inc.
Paula Stokes
Seventeen-year-old Max, his girlfriend Parvati, and best friend Pres form Liars, Inc., expecting that forging notes and lying for their peers will lead to easy cash, but when Pres asks Max to cover for him, it may be a fatal mistake.
-
Lies My Girlfriend Told Me
Julie Ann Peters
When her girlfriend dies suddenly at age seventeen, Colorado teenager Alix struggles with grief as painful secrets are revealed.