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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Rani Patel in Full Effect
Sonia Patel
Rani Patel, almost seventeen and living on remote Moloka'i island, is oppressed by the cultural norms of her Gujarati immigrant parents but when Mark, an older man, draws her into new experiences red flags abound.
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Rats Saw God
Rob Thomas
Having failed English, eighteen-year-old Steve York must generate a paper to get credit and chooses to write about his years in high school, during which he experienced his first love and struggled with family relationships.
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Raymie Nightingale
Kate DiCamillo
Hoping that if she wins a local beauty pageant her father will come home, Raymie practices twirling a baton and performing good deeds as she is drawn into an unlikely friendship with a drama queen and a saboteur.
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Real Sisters Pretend
Megan Dowd Lambert
As they play, Mia and Tayja confirm that there's one thing they don't have to pretend: They know in their hearts that they're real sisters, even though others don't always recognize this since they're adopted and don't look alike. Safe in the knowledge that adoption has made them "forever family," the sisters end their make-believe journey with a joyful homecoming to a real home with their two moms.
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Reason to Breathe
Rebecca Donovan
In the affluent town of Weslyn, Connecticut, where most people worry about what to be seen in and who to be seen with, Emma Thomas would rather not be seen at all. She's more concerned with feigning perfection- pulling down her sleeves to conceal the bruises, not wanting anyone to know how far from perfect her life truly is. Without expecting it, she finds love. It challenges her to recognize her own worth- at the risk of revealing the terrible secret she's desperate to hide.
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Rebecca's Journey Home
Brynn Olenberg Sugarman
Mr. and Mrs. Stein and their young sons Gabe and Jacob adopt a baby girl from Vietnam.
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Red: A Crayon's Story
Michael Hall
Red's factory-applied label clearly says that he is red, but despite the best efforts of his teacher, fellow crayons and art supplies, and family members, he cannot seem to do anything right until a new friend offers a fresh perspective.
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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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Red Sky in the Morning
Elizabeth Laird
Although she loves her baby brother, Anna finds herself trying to hide his severe physical and mental disability from her friends.
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Red Thread Sisters
Caro Antoinette Peacock
This novel, by Carol Antoinette Peacock, offers a "story of friendship, family, and love. Wen has spent the first eleven years of her life at an orphanage in rural China . . . [with] her best friend, Shu Ling. When Wen is adopted by an American couple, she struggles . . . knowing that Shu Ling remains back at the orphanage, alone. Wen knows that her best friend deserves a family and a future, too. But finding a home for Shu Ling isn't easy, and time is running out."
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Refuse
Elliott DeLine
Dean, a 22-year old female-to-male-transsexual, is no LGBT poster boy. Unemployed, depressed, mid-transition, friendless, and still living in the upstairs bedroom of his parents’ house in a conservative suburb, he can think of little to do but write his memoir. In the third person, he tells the tale of his would-be love affair with his college roommate, Colin, another trans man with a girlfriend and a successful indie rock band. The plot is interrupted intermittently by Dean’s first person commentary, often criticizing middle-class conformity—but also the queer counterculture from which he feels equally alienated. He is obsessed with Morrissey of The Smiths and wants nothing in life other than the same level of fame. As his far-fetched dreams become a foreseeable reality, he must decide between honesty and belonging, conformity or isolation, community or self.
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Release
Patrick Ness
Adam Thorn doesn't know it yet, but today will change his life. Between his religious family, a deeply unpleasant ultimatum from his boss, and his own unrequited love for his sort-of ex, Enzo, it seems as though Adam's life is falling apart. At least he has two people to keep him sane: his new boyfriend (he does love Linus, doesn't he?) and his best friend, Angela. But all day long, old memories and new heartaches come crashing together, throwing Adam's life into chaos. The bindings of his world are coming untied one by one; yet in spite of everything he has to let go, he may also find freedom in the release. Time is running out, though. Because way across town, a ghost has just risen from the lake...--
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René Has Two Last Names / René tiene dos apellidos
Rene Colato Lainez
In this story based on the author's childhood, a young Salvadoran immigrant is teased for having two last names until he presents his family tree project celebrating his heritage.
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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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Revolution
Jennifer Donnelly
An angry, grieving seventeen-year-old musician facing expulsion from her prestigious Brooklyn private school travels to Paris to complete a school assignment and uncovers a diary written during the French revolution by a young actress attempting to help a tortured, imprisoned little boy--Louis Charles, the lost king of France.
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Revolutions of the Heart
Marsha Qualey
Cory's seventeenth year is marked by her mother's sudden death, the return of her hotheaded older brother, her romance with a Native American boy, and the eruption of bigotry in her small Wisconsin town.
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Rice and Beans
Wiley Blevins
A young girl adopted from China sees that her hair and skin color are different from that of her parents. She finds, however, that there's much more to making a family than sharing red hair and freckles.
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Riding Chance
Christine Kendall
Since his mother died thirteen-year-old Troy has been skipping school and hanging out with the wrong crowd, and now he and his friend Foster have been sentenced to work in the local Philadelphia stables; at first he is apprehensive around the horses, but soon he bonds with a mare named Chance, and discovers the sport of polo--but also makes some new enemies.
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Rits
Mariken Jongman and Wanda Boeke
When his father runs off with his girlfriend and his distraught mother is admitted to an institution, thirteen-year-old Rits goes to live with his uncle and tries to make the best of his unusual circumstances.
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Robert Lives with His Grandparents
Martha Hickman Whitmore
Robert is embarrassed to admit to his classmates that he has lived with his grandparents ever since his parents' divorce.
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Robin and Ruby
K.M. Soehnlein
At twenty-years-old, Robin MacKenzie is waiting for his life to start. Then, one hot June weekend, Robin gets dumped by his boyfriend and quickly hits the road with his best friend George to find his teenaged sister, Ruby, who's vanished from a party at the Jersey Shore. As their paths converge, Robin and Ruby confront the sadness of their shared past and rebuild the bonds that still run deep.
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Roland Humphrey is Wearing a What?
Eileen Kiernan-Johnson
Roland Humphrey is a little boy who likes sparkly things and bright colors. He likes both sports and ballet, and doesn't understand why girls can like both but not boys. Will he bow to peer pressure, or follow his heart and be the authentic Roland Humphrey?
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Romiette and Julio
Sharon M. Draper
Romiette, an African-American girl, and Julio, a Hispanic boy, discover that they attend the same high school after falling in love on the Internet, but are harrassed by a gang whose members object to their interracial dating.
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Rosie and Skate
Beth Ann Bauman
New Jersey sisters Rosie, aged fifteen, and Skate, aged sixteen, cope differently with their father's alcoholism and incarceration, but manage to stay close to one another as they strive to lead normal lives and find hope for the future.
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Rosie's Family: An Adoption Story
Lori Rosove
Rosie's family is a story about belonging in a family regardless of differences. Rosie is a beagle who was adopted by schnauzers. She feels different from the rest of the family and sets forth many questions that children who were adopted may have.