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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The Boy on Cinnamon Street
Phoebe Stone
A story about a wounded girl and the boy who won't give up on her. 7th grader Louise should be the captain of her school's gymnastics team - but she isn't. She's fun and cute and should have lots of friends - but she doesn't. And there's a dreamy boy who has a crush on her - but somehow they never connect. Louise has everything going for her - so what is it that's holding her back? Phoebe Stone tells the winning story of the spring when 7th grader Louise Terrace wakes up, finds the courage to confront the painful family secret she's hiding from - and finally get the boy.
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The Breakaways
Cathy G. Johnson
Quiet, sensitive Faith starts middle school already worrying about how she will fit in. To her surprise, Amanda, a popular eighth grader, convinces her to join the school soccer team, the Bloodhounds. Having never played soccer in her life, Faith ends up on the C team, a ragtag group that’s way better at drama than at teamwork. Although they are awful at soccer, Faith and her teammates soon form a bond both on and off the soccer field that challenges their notions of loyalty, identity, friendship, and unity. The Breakaways from Cathy G. Johnson is a raw, and beautifully honest graphic novel that looks into the lives of a diverse and defiantly independent group of kids learning to make room for themselves in the world.
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The Bridge Home
Padma Venkatraman
Life is harsh in Chennai's teeming streets, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, eleven-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter--and friendship--on an abandoned bridge. With two homeless boys, Muthi and Arul, the group forms a family of sorts. And while making a living scavenging the city's trash heaps is the pits, the kids find plenty to laugh about and take pride in too. After all, they are now the bosses of themselves and no longer dependent on untrustworthy adults. But when illness strikes, Viji must decide whether to risk seeking help from strangers or to keep holding on to their fragile, hard-fought freedom.
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The Buddha of Suburbia
Hanif Kureishi
Karim is the son of an assimilated Indian businessman in London. When his Zen-obsessed father becomes the guru of the swinging suburban scene, Karim is swept up into the world of theater, art, drugs, rock and roll and sexual exploration.
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The Can Man
Laura E. Williams
After watching a homeless man collect empty soft drink cans for the redemption money, a young boy decides to collect cans himself to earn money for a skateboard until he has a change of heart.
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The Cardboard Kingdom
Chad Sell
Welcome to a neighborhood of kids who transform ordinary boxes into colorful costumes, and their ordinary block into cardboard kingdom. This is the summer when sixteen kids encounter knights and rogues, robots and monsters—and their own inner demons—on one last quest before school starts again. In the Cardboard Kingdom, you can be anything you want to be—imagine that! The Cardboard Kingdom was created, organized, and drawn by Chad Sell with writing from ten other authors: Jay Fuller, David DeMeo, Katie Schenkel, Kris Moore, Molly Muldoon, Vid Alliger, Manuel Betancourt, Michael Cole, Cloud Jacobs, and Barbara Perez Marquez. The Cardboard Kingdom affirms the power of imagination and play during the most important years of adolescent identity-searching and emotional growth.
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The Case of the Stolen Scarab
Nancy Garden
After the Taylor-Michaelson family buys and old inn in Vermont, they attempt to solve a case involving a stolen scarab.
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The Chalk Rainbow
Deborah Kelly
Zane is different to other kids. He has his own made-up language. He likes to line things up. And he is frightened of things that don’t seem to bother other people — like the colour black. His father gets frustrated and angry with Zane. His mother tries hard to explain things to him. But nothing seems to work. Zane just scrunches himself up into a ball and screams. Things are looking pretty bleak for Zane and his family; that is, until Zane’s big sister starts to draw a chalk rainbow at the top of the front steps … The Chalk Rainbow explores difference and diversity through a family living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It’s also a story of unconditional love, of trust and of learning to look at the world through the eyes of others. The story is told by Zane’s older sister in a way that young children can easily relate to. The ending is uplifting as all members of the family learn to look at things differently and find a way to move forward together.
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The Child in the Fathers' Hearts: A Story of Adoption
Paul Janson
A picture book designed to be read to adopted children of gay parents. The child is adopted by two fathers. The opening comments are about the author's own philosophy of children, that all children begin in the heart of their parents however they come to be a part of a family.
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The Choices We Make
Karma Brown
Hannah and Kate became friends in the fifth grade, when Hannah hit a boy for looking up Kate's skirt with a mirror. While they've been close as sisters ever since, Hannah can't help but feel envious of the little family Kate and her husband, David, have created, complete with two perfect little girls. She and Ben have been trying for years to have a baby, so when they receive the news that she will likely never get pregnant, Hannah's heartbreak is overwhelming. But just as they begin to tentatively explore the other options, it's Kate's turn to do the rescuing. Not only does she offer to be Hannah's surrogate, but Kate is willing to use her own eggs to do so. Full of renewed hope, excitement and gratitude, these two families embark on an incredible journey toward parenthood, until a devastating tragedy puts everything these women have worked toward at risk of falling apart.
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The Christmas Truck
J. B. Blankenship
When celebrating a special Christmas tradition things go awry. Papa, Dad, their amazing kid, and one fabulous grandmother work together and implement a plan to save Christmas for a child they have never met.
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The Color Purple
Alice Walker
This feminist novel about an abused and uneducated black woman's struggle for empowerment was praised for the depth of its female characters and for its eloquent use of black English vernacular.
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The Colors of Us
Karen Katz
Seven-year-old Lena and her mother observe the variations in the color of their friends' skin, viewed in terms of foods and things found in nature.
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The Cook's Family
Laurence Yep
As her parents' arguments become more frequent, Robin looks forward to the visits that she and her grandmother make to Chinatown, where they pretend to be an elderly cook's family, giving Robin new insights into her Chinese heritage.
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The Daddy Machine
Johnny Valentine
Two children who have two mothers dream of what it would be like to have a father and pretend to invent a daddy machine.
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The Dangerous Art of Blending In
Angelo Surmelis
Evan Panos's strict immigrant Greek mother sees him as a disappointment. His workaholic father is a staunch believer in avoiding any kind of conflict. And his best friend, Henry, has somehow become distractingly attractive over the summer. His only escape is drawing, in an abandoned monastery that feels as lonely as he is. And Henry makes Evan believe that he deserves more than his mother's harsh words and terrifying abuse. As things escalate, Evan has to decide how to find his voice in a world where he has survived so long by being silent.
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The Danish Girl
David Ebershoff
Loosely inspired by a true story, this tender portrait of marriage asks: What do you do when the person you love has to change? It starts with a question, a simple favor asked by a wife of her husband while both are painting in their studio, setting off a transformation neither can anticipate. Uniting fact and fiction into an original romantic vision, The Danish Girl eloquently portrays the unique intimacy that defines every marriage and the remarkable story of Lili Elbe, a pioneer in transgender history, and the woman torn between loyalty to her marriage and her own ambitions and desires. The Danish Girl’s lush prose and generous emotional insight make it, after the last page is turned, a deeply moving first novel about one of the most passionate and unusual love stories of the 20th century.
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The Day Joanie Frankenhauser Became a Boy
Francess Lin Lantz
Tired of gender stereotyping at home, in the classroom, and especially on the football field, ten-year-old Joanie pretends to be a boy when her family moves to a new town, but soon finds there are unexpected consequences.
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The Days of Summer
Eve Bunting
As summer ends and they get ready to go back to school, two young girls try to deal with the news that the grandparents they love are getting a divorce.
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The Day War Came
Nicola Davies
The day war came there were flowers on the windowsill and my father sang my baby brother back to sleep. Imagine if, on an ordinary day, after a morning of studying tadpoles and drawing birds at school, war came to your town and turned it to rubble. Imagine if you lost everything and everyone, and you had to make a dangerous journey all alone. Imagine that there was no welcome at the end, and no room for you to even take a seat at school. And then a child, just like you, gave you something ordinary but so very, very precious. In lyrical, deeply affecting language, Nicola Davies’s text combines with Rebecca Cobb’s expressive illustrations to evoke the experience of a child who sees war take away all that she knows.
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The Day We Met You
Phoebe Koehler
Mom and Dad recount the exciting day when they adopted their baby.
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The Day You Begin
Jacqueline Woodson
Other students laugh when Rigoberto, an immigrant from Venezuela, introduces himself but later, he meets Angelina and discovers that he is not the only one who feels like an outsider.
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The Deaf Musicians
Pete Seeger and Paul Dubois Jacobs
Lee, a jazz pianist, has to leave his band when he begins losing his hearing, but he meets a deaf saxophone player in a sign language class and together they form a snazzy new band.
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The Difference Between You and Me
Madeleine George
School outsider Jesse, a lesbian, is having secret trysts with Emily, the popular student council vice president, but when they find themselves on opposite sides of a major issue and Jesse becomes more involved with a student activist, they are forced to make a difficult decision.
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The Dream Jar
Bonnie Pryor
Valentina's family has come from Russia with a wonderful dream--to own a store. Valentina wants to help, but everyone says she's too little to contribute to the glass jar where the dream money is kept. The family becomes discouraged when little money comes in, but Valentina has discovered how she can help make their dream come true.