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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Saving Baby Doe
Danette Vigilante
Lionel and Anisa are the best of friends and have seen each other through some pretty tough times--Anisa's dad died and Lionel's dad left, which is like a death for Lionel. They stick together no matter what. So when Lionel suggests a detour through a local construction site on their way home, Anisa doesn't say no. And that's where Lionel and Anisa make a startling discovery--a baby abandoned in a port-o-potty. Anisa and Lionel spring into action. And in saving Baby Doe, they end up saving so much more.
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Saving Montgomery Sole
Mariko Tamaki
Montgomery Sole is a square peg in a small town, forced to go to a school full of jocks and girls who don't even know what irony is. It would all be impossible if it weren't for her best friends, Thomas and Naoki. The three are also the only members of Jefferson High's Mystery Club, dedicated to exploring the weird and unexplained, from ESP and astrology to super powers and mysterious objects. Then there's the Eye of Know, the possibly powerful crystal amulet Monty bought online. Will it help her predict the future or fight back against the ignorant jerks who make fun of Thomas for being gay or Monty for having lesbian moms? Maybe the Eye is here just in time, because the newest resident of their small town is scarier than mothmen, poltergeists, or, you know, gym. Thoughtful, funny, and painfully honest, Montgomery Sole is someone you'll want to laugh and cry with over a big cup of frozen yogurt with extra toppings.
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Say the Word
Jeannine Garsee
Perfectionist Shawna dates the right boys, gets good grades, and follows her father's every rule. So when her estranged lesbian mother dies, Shawna needs to figure out how to have the perfect reaction. But anger from being abandoned ten years ago, combined with the introduction of her mother's other family, threatens to leave Shawna spinning out of control. A relatable and honest teen voice-and a shocking secret-make this novel a true page-turner.
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Scars
Cheryl Rainfield
Fifteen-year-old Kendra, a budding artist, has not felt safe since she began to recall devastating memories of childhood sexual abuse, especially since she cannot remember her abuser's identity, and she copes with the pressure by cutting herself.
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Scooter
Vera B. Williams
A child's silver blue scooter helps her to adjust to her new home. Elana Rose tells of her event-filled first summer after moving with her mother to a new apartment, as new neighbors and friends become an important part of Elana Rose's life. A treasure of a book--touching, funny, and totally original--with a surprise climax.
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Screaming Divas
Suzanne Kamata
A teenage girl band in 1980s South Carolina becomes a local sensation, but just as its members are about to achieve their rock girl dreams, tragedy strikes.
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Sea Prayer
Khaled Hosseini
Sea Prayer is composed in the form of a letter, from a father to his son, on the eve of their journey. Watching over his sleeping son, the father reflects on the dangerous sea-crossing that lies before them. It is also a vivid portrait of their life in Homs, Syria, before the war, and of that city's swift transformation from a home into a deadly war zone.
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Search for Safety
John Langan
Ben McKee, a new student at Bluford High School, tries to hide the bruises covering his body from his teachers and his new friends.
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See No Color
Shannon Gibney
Alex has always identified herself as a baseball player, the daughter of a winning coach, but when she realizes that is not enough she begins to come to terms with her adoption and her race.
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See You at Harry's
Jo Knowles
Twelve-year-old Fern feels invisible in her family, where grumpy eighteen-year-old Sarah is working at the family restaurant, fourteen-year-old Holden is struggling with school bullies and his emerging homosexuality, and adorable, three-year-old Charlie is always the center of attention, and when tragedy strikes, the fragile bond holding the family together is stretched almost to the breaking point.
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See You Tomorrow, Charles
Miriam Cohen
When Charles, a young blind boy, joins their first-grade class, Anna Maria and the other children feel unsure of themselves and of him until they learn to accept Charles.
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Sélavi: A Haitian Story of Hope
Youme Landowne
A homeless boy on the streets of Haiti joins other street children, and together they build a home and a radio station where they can care for themselves and for other homeless children.
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Separations
Robert Lehrman
When Kim's parents get a divorce, she must leave her father, her tennis coach, and her suburban home to move into New York City.
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Seven Ways We Lie
Riley Redgate
A chance encounter tangles the lives of seven high school students, each resisting the allure of one of the seven deadly sins, and each telling their story from their seven distinct points of view.
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Shades of People
Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly
An author and photographer join forces in this pictorial essay on skin color, demonstrating the different appearances children can have, but reminding the reader that they are still children that enjoy the same things. Like a wrapped gift, the authors' message is that skin is just a covering and that you cannot tell what someone is like from the color of their skin.
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Shanghai Messenger
Andrea Cheng
A free-verse novel about eleven-year-old Xiao Mei's visit with her extended family in China, where the Chinese-American girl finds many differences but also the similarities that bind a family together.
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Shark Girl
Kelly Bingham
After a shark attack causes the amputation of her right arm, fifteen-year-old Jane, an aspiring artist, struggles to come to terms with her loss and the changes it imposes on her day-to-day life and her plans for the future.
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Shattered
Kathi Baron
Teen violin prodigy Cassie has been tiptoeing around her father, whose moods have become increasingly explosive. After he destroys her beloved and valuable violin, Cassie, shocked, runs away, eventually seeking refuge in a homeless shelter. She later learns that her father, a former violinist, was physically beaten as a child by her grandfather, a painful secret he's kept hidden from his family, and the cause of his violent outbursts. With all of their lives shattered in some way, Cassie's family must struggle to repair their broken relationships. As Cassie moves forward, she ultimately finds a way to help others, having developed compassion through her own painful experiences. Written in lyrical prose, Shattered tells the moving story of how one girl finds inner strength through music.
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She Loves You, She Loves You Not...
Julie Anne Peters
When seventeen-year-old Alyssa is disowned by her father for being a lesbian, she is sent off to a small town in Colorado to live with the mother she has never known, where she is forced to come to terms with herself and her family.
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Shine
Lauren Myracle
When her best gay friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, sixteen-year-old Cat sets out to discover who in her small town did it.
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Shooting the Moon
Frances O'Roark Dowell
After her brother TJ joins the army and is sent to Vietnam, 12-year-old Jamie Dexter is proud that TJ is following in their father's footsteps. Instead of letters, TJ sends Jamie undeveloped rolls of film, and what she sees when she develops them reveals a whole new side of the war.
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Shy Mama's Halloween
Anne Broyles
For Anya, Dasha, Irina, and Dimitrii, newly arrived to this country, Halloween seems a wonderfully strange and exciting holiday. They enlist Mrs. Rumanski and her midnight-blue Singer sewing machine in the apartment downstairs to help with their costumes, and Papa agrees to take them out trick-or-treating. But Papa comes home sick that evening, and it looks as though the children will be watching the trick or treating from the upstairs window. Mama, who is frightened by so much in this new country, especially the thought of ghosts and goblins on the streets, surprises them all when she rises to the occasion and takes her young princess, witch, devil, and clown down the stairs and out into the night. As they go from house to house, they find that everyone along the street is friendly. No one seems to care that their "Thank yous" are said with an accent, or that Mama, in her babushka, can speak only a few words of English. For Anya, Dasha, Irina, and Dimitrii, it is their first sense of belonging in their new country, of savoring the fun and magic of Halloween and the generosity of strangers. For Mama, it is a much greater step out into a new world, led by her children.
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Sibling Split: Family Fix-It Plan
M. G. Higgins
Siblings Arnie and Annabelle are horrified by the news that their parents are separating, and even more devastated at the idea that they are being split up, so they decide to create a video montage of their favorite family memories in the hope that it will convince their parents to stay together.
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Sibling Split: Party of Nine
M. G. Higgins
It is the first Thanksgiving since their parents split up, and twelve-year-old Arnie has come to the farm to spend the weekend with eleven-year-old Annabelle and their father at the farm--and when it starts to looks like it will just be the three of them, Arnie and Annabelle decide to invite several of their neighbors over for the feast.
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Sibling Split: The Impossible Wish
M. G. Higgins
Months after their parents divorce, Annabelle who lives with their father, and Arnie, who lives with their mother, still nurture the hope that somehow their parents will get back together, and that once more they will be a family.