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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My Year in the Middle
Lila Quintero Weaver
Sixth-grader Lu Olivera just wants to keep her head down and get along with everyone in her class. The trouble is, Lu’s old friends have been changing lately — acting boy crazy and making snide remarks about Lu’s newfound talent for running track. Lu’s secret hope for a new friend is fellow runner Belinda Gresham. But in 1970 in Red Grove, Alabama, blacks and whites don’t mix. As segregationist ex-governor George Wallace ramps up his campaign against the current governor, Albert Brewer, growing tensions in the state — and in the classroom — mean that Lu can’t stay neutral about the racial divide at school. Will she find the gumption to stand up for what’s right and to choose friends who do the same?
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Nala's Magical Mitsiaq: A Story of Inuit Adoption
Jennifer Noah
When a blizzard prevents sisters Nala and Qiatsuk from going sledding, they end up staying home and hearing the story of Nala's adoption and learning about Inuit custom adoption instead.
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Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List
Rachel Cohn
Although they have been friends and neighbors all their lives, straight Naomi and gay Ely find their relationship severely strained during their freshman year at New York University.
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Nate Expectations (Better Nate Than Ever #3)
Tim Federle
Desperate to turn his life from flop to fabulous, Nate takes on a huge freshman English project with his BFF, Libby: he's going to make a musical out of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. But when Nate's New York crush ghosts him, and his grades start to slip, he finds the only thing harder than being on Broadway is being a freshman.
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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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Newspaper Hats
Phil Cummings
A little girl, Georgie, visits her grandfather in the nursing home where he is suffering from memory loss, and manages to reconnect with him when they make newspaper hats for everyone.
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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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Nico and Tucker
Rachel Gold
The decision can't be put off any longer. A medical crisis turns Nico's body into a battleground, crushing Nico under conflicting family pressures. Having lived genderqueer for years, Nico is used to getting strong reactions (and uninvited opinions!) from everyone, but it is Tucker's reaction that hurts the most. Jess Tucker didn't mean to hurt Nico, but she panicked. And after the worst year of her life, she's hanging on by a thread. Forget recovery time and therapy, she needs to put the past behind her and be normal again. But when her relationship with Nico becomes more than she can handle, she cuts and runs.
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Night Hoops
Carl Deuker
While trying to prove that he is good enough to be on his high school's varsity basketball team, Nick must also deal with his parents' divorce and the erratic behavior of a troubled classmate who lives across the street.
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Night Music
Jenn Marie Thorne
Ruby and Oscar are caught up in a romance despite very different backgrounds and her having given up on music, while he is the protégé of her father, a renowned composer.
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Nina Bonita: A Story
Ana Maria Machado
Enchanted by Nina Bonita's black skin, a white rabbit determines to find a way to have children as beautiful and black as she is.
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Nine Candles
Maria Testa
After visiting his mother in prison on his seventh birthday, Raymond wishes it were his ninth birthday when Mama has promised to be home with his dad and him.
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Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story
Nora Raleigh Baskin
The morning of September 11, 2001, was warm, clear and perfect. Until 8:46 a.m when a plane struck the World Trade Center. But that has not happened yet.`
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Nini
Francois Thisdale
Long before Nini was born, she was in a safe place where a familiar voice promised her a loving home. But once she was born, that soft voice was replaced by the words of care givers in an orphanage. Though they were kind, Nini missed the soft voice and the promises it made. Then, one day, a man and a woman on the other side of the world learned that their dreams were about to come true. They would finally have a baby to love. When they all met, Nini once again heard a soft voice, as reassuring and as loving as the first, and trusted that the promises had come true. But her first memory was never lost--it remained an echo for her to share with her parents in her new home.
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No and Me
Delphine de Vigan
Parisian teenager Lou has an IQ of 160, OCD tendencies, and a mother who has suffered from depression for years. But Lou is about to change her life-and that of her parents-all because of a school project about homeless teens. While doing research, Lou meets No, a teenage girl living on the streets. As their friendship grows, Lou bravely asks her parents if No can live with them, and is astonished when they agree. No's presence forces Lou's family to come to terms with a secret tragedy. But can this shaky, newfound family continue to live together when No's own past comes back to haunt her?
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No Fixed Address
Susin Nielsen
Twelve-year-old Felix's appearance on a television game show reveals that he and his mother have been homeless for a while, but also restores some of his faith in other people.
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No Mirrors in My Nana's House
Ysaye M. Barnwell
A girl discovers the beauty in herself by looking into her Nana's eyes.
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None of the Above
I.W. Gregorio
A groundbreaking story about a teenage girl who discovers she's intersex...and what happens when her secret is revealed to the entire school. Incredibly compelling and sensitively told, None of the Above is a thought-provoking novel that explores what it means to be a boy, a girl, or something in between.
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No Place
Todd Strasser
Rendered homeless by circumstances beyond his family's control, Dan is forced to move to Tent City, where he begins fighting for better conditions only to be targeted by an adversary who wants to destroy the impoverished region.
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Nora's Chicks
Patricia Maclachlan
Nora and her family have just arrived from Russia and are making a new home on the American frontier. The prairie is very different from the forested hills Nora is used to. Most of all, it’s lonely. Papa has the cows he sings to as he milks them. Baby brother Milo has a dog to follow him wherever he goes. But Nora has no one and nothing to call her own until Papa brings home a dozen chicks and two geese. Nora names each one, and they follow her everywhere — even to church! But what will happen when one of her beloved chicks goes missing?
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No Small Thing
Natale Ghent
Then twelve-year-old Nathaniel and his two sisters, Cid and Queenie, discover an ad for a free pony in the paper, they can hardly believe their luck. The pony is theirs, as long as they can afford to take care of it. But what will their mother say? Nat knows things are hard for his mom; his dad walked out on them four years ago. But having a pony would help Nat and Cid stop bickering and it would mean so much to Queenie. When Nat's mother lets them keep it, life is still not easy, but at the end of each day, Nat knows his pony is waiting from him. Until a fire destroys the barn.
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Not All Princesses Dress in Pink
Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple
Rhyming text affirms that girls can pursue their many interests, from playing sports to planting flowers in the dirt, without giving up their tiaras.
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Notes from the Blender
Trish Cook and Brendan Halpin
Two teenagers -- a heavy-metal-music-loving boy who is still mourning the death of his mother years earlier, and a beautiful, popular girl whose parents divorced because her father is gay -- try to negotiate the complications of family and peer relationships as they get to know each other after learning that their father and mother are marrying each other.
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Notes on a Near-Life Experience
Olivia Birdsall
Mia never thought she'd be the child of a broken home. Yet when she's 15 years old, one day her father just up and moves out. As her family life crumbles, her love life is finally coming together. Julian, her brother Allen's best friend and her longtime crush, has finally noticed her—and being with Julian makes her happier than she can put into words. Meanwhile, her mother has disappeared into work, her brother is skipping school and acting weird, and her father is cohabitating with a frighteningly sexy Peruvian woman named Paloma. Mia wishes the divorce would just go away so she could focus on Julian...but she can't ignore her problems forever. In this honest, witty, utterly accessible winner of the Delacorte Press Contest, first-time author Olivia Birdsall creates an authentic and lovable teenager in Mia.
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Not Every Princess
Jeffery Bone and Lisa Bone
After listing activities that are stereotypically, but not always, attributed to princesses, fairies, pirates, superheroes, and more, encourages the reader to imagine what one could be, despite others' expectations. Includes note to parents.