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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Sibling Split: Trouble in the City
M. G. Higgins
Now that summer is over and school is beginning separated siblings Annabelle and Arnie are struggling to cope with the reality of life apart--but when Annabelle comes to her mother and brother's apartment in the city a lot of repressed emotion suddenly overflows.
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Signal
Cynthia C. DeFelice
After moving with his emotionally distant father to the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, twelve-year-old Owen faces a lonely summer until he meets an abused girl who may be a space alien.
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Sign Up Here: A Story about Friendship
Kathryn Cole
When nobody will let her join their club, Dee-Dee decides to start a club of her own that welcomes everybody.
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Silas' Seven Grandparents
Anita Horrocks
Silas' Seven Grandparents is a fun and loving story about having multiple sets of grandparents and step-grandparents. When Silas' parents go away on a business trip, all seven grandparents invite Silas to stay with them...how can he choose one without hurting the others' feelings?
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Silence
Deborah A. Lytton
After an accident robs Stella of her hearing and her dream of going to Broadway, she meets Hayden, a boy who stutters, and comes to learn what it truly means to connect and communicate in a world filled with silence.
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Silhouette of a Sparrow
Molly Beth Griffin
During the summer of 1926 in the lake resort town of Excelsior, Minnesota, sixteen-year-old Garnet, who dreams of indulging her passion for ornithology, is resigned to marrying a nice boy and settling into middle-class homemaking until she takes a liberating job in a hat shop and begins an intense, secret relationship with a daring and beautiful flapper.
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Silver Shoes
Caroline Binch
Molly loves to dance, and she desperately wants some silver shoes for her first dance class. But her mum says she has to wait!
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Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
Becky Albertalli
Sixteen-year-old, not-so-openly-gay Simon Spier is blackmailed into playing wingman for his classmate or else his sexual identity--and that of his pen pal--will be revealed.
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Since We're Friends: An Autism Picture Book
Celeste Shally
A boy describes his friendship with Matt, whose autism spectrum disorder causes him to behave strangely at times, and how he make things easier for Matt at school and in their neighborhood.
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Singing Tree and Laughing Water
Sylvia Hardwick
Relates the adventures of two Native American sisters after they go to live with a foster mother.
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Sing to the Stars
Mary Brigid Barrett and Sandra Speidel
When Ephram becomes friends with a blind man in his neighborhood and finds out that Mr. Washington was a famous pianist who hasn't touched a piano for a long time, he resolves to get the man back on stage.
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Sister Mischief
Laura Goode
Esme Rockett, also known as MC Ferocious, rocks her suburban Minnesota Christian high school with more than the hip-hop music she makes with best friends Marcy (DJ SheStorm) and Tess (The ConTessa) when she develops feelings for her co-MC, Rowie (MC Rohini).
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Sisters
Judith Caseley
Kika has just been adopted -- and she's worried. There's so much that's new to her: a different language, new friends to make, and something she's never had before -- a family. Melissa has a new sister -- and she's excited. There's so much to share with Kika: trips to the playground, afternoons at the library, and birthday parties. Through each new experience, Kika and Melissa discover that sisterhood can be fun, challenging, and sometimes unpredictable, but always rewarding. Best of all, a sister is a friend for life.
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Sister's Choice
Emilie Richards
Childless Kendra and husband Isaac accept an offer from Kendra's younger sister- single mom Jamie- to conceive and carry a child for them. But when a medical crisis threatens Jamie's health she learns that the most difficult choice in her life is yet to come.
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Sister Split
Sally Warner
When her parents separate, eleven-year-old Ivy must cope not only with their impending divorce, but also with the unexpected impact it has on her relationship with her older sister.
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Skateboard Sonar
Eric Stevens
Although blind, Matty is an excellent skateboarder, but when the former champion mocks him during the skating competition, Matty shows that seeing is not everything.
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SkateFate
Juan Felipe Herrera
Lucky Z, a Chicano foster child, loved living on the edge until a drag racing accident left him in a wheelchair, but as he struggles to find his place in a new high school, he begins writing poetry everywhere about anything, and in finding his voice he also discovers the beauty around him.
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Skin
Adrienne Maria Vrettos
You don't have to be thin to feel small. Donnie's life is unraveling. His parents' marriage is falling apart, and his sister is slowly slipping away in the grip of her illness. To top it all off, he accidentally starts a rumor at school that hurts someone he cares about and leaves him an outcast. So Donnie does the only thing he knows how to do: He tries to fix things, to make everything the way it was before. Before his parents stopped loving each other, before his sister disappeared, before he was alone. But some things are beyond repair, and it will take all Donnie's strength to stop looking back and start moving forward again.
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Skin Again
Bell Hooks
The skin I'm in is just a covering. It cannot tell my story. The skin I'm in is just a covering. If you want to know who I am you have got to come inside and open your heart way wide. Celebrating all that makes us unique and different, Skin Again offers new ways to talk about race and identity. Race matters, but only so much, what's most important is who we are on the inside.
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Skyscraping
Cordelia Jensen
In 1993 in New York City, high school senior Mira uncovers many secrets, including that her father has a male lover.
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Slant
Laura E. Williams
Thirteen-year-old Lauren, a Korean-American adoptee, is tired of being called "slant" and "gook," and longs to have plastic surgery on her eyes, but when her father finds out about her wish--and a long-kept secret about her mother's death is revealed--Lauren starts to question some of her own assumptions.
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Sliding into Home
Nina Vincent
Thirteen-year-old Flip Simpson's ideal life just began to crumble. His adoptive parents are splitting up. He's moving from the only home he's ever known. He has to leave before his baseball team finishes the playoffs. And his little sister is his only companion. Flip folds under the weight of so much loss until he meets Ricki, an indigenous classmate who loves baseball and gives Flip a sense of pride in his Mayan roots, and Zorba, an eccentric houseboat dweller who is a cross between The Cat in the Hat and Willy Wonka. Zorba possesses an uncanny ability to sense Flip's fears and doubts and inspires the courage Flip needs to overcome both. Just as life begins to look up, Flip is faced with the challenge of a racist bully. Steve picks at the wounds Flip has tried so hard to mend and brings to the surface questions Flip didn't know he had about race, culture and belonging. Will Flip rise to the challenge and face Steve, or retreat into himself once again?
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Small Things
Mel Tregonning
In this wordless graphic picture book, a young boy feels alone with his worries. He isn't fitting in well at school. His grades are slipping. He's even lashing out at those who love him. This short but hard-hitting wordless graphic picture book gets to the heart of childhood anxiety and opens the way for dialogue about acceptance, vulnerability, and the universal experience of worry.
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Soames on the Range
Nancy Belgue
After he gets in trouble at school for fighting, fifteen-year-old San Francisco "Cisco" Soames is sent by his hippy parents to live with his renegade uncle on a dude ranch.
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Social Intercourse
Greg Howard
Told from both viewpoints, Beckett Gaines, an out-and-proud choir member, and star quarterback Jaxon Parker team up to derail the budding romance between their parents.