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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Antonio's Card / La tarjeta de Antonio
Rigoberto Gonzalez and Cecilia Concepcion Alvarez
With Mother's Day coming, Antonio finds he has to decide about what is important to him when his classmates make fun of the unusual appearance of his mother's partner, Leslie.
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Anything But Typical
Nora Raleigh Baskin
Jason Blake is an autistic twelve-year-old living in a neurotypical world. Most days it's just a matter of time before something goes wrong. But Jason finds a glimmer of understanding when he comes across PhoenixBird, who posts stories to the same online site as he does. Jason can be himself when he writes and he thinks that PhoneixBird-her name is Rebecca-could be his first real friend. But as desperate as Jason is to met her, he's terrified that if they do meet, Rebecca wil only see his autism and not who Jason really is.
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Anything Could Happen
Will Walton
Tretch lives in a small town where everybody's in everybody else's business. He's in love with his straight best friend, Matt, and Matt is completely oblivious to the way Tretch feels. Meanwhile, Tretch's family has no idea who he really is, and the girl at the local bookstore has no clue how off-base her crush on him is.
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A Path of Stars
Anne Sibley O'Brien
A refugee from Cambodia, Dara's beloved grandmother is grief-stricken when she learns her brother has died, and it is up to Dara to try and heal her.
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A Piece of Home
Jeri Watts
When Hee Jun’s family moves from Korea to West Virginia, he struggles to adjust to his new home. His eyes are not big and round like his classmates’, and he can’t understand anything the teacher says, even when she speaks s-l-o-w-l-y and loudly at him. As he lies in bed at night, the sky seems smaller and darker. But little by little Hee Jun begins to learn English words and make friends on the playground. And one day he is invited to a classmate’s house, where he sees a flower he knows from his garden in Korea — mugunghwa, or rose of Sharon, as his friend tells him — and Hee Jun is happy to bring a shoot to his grandmother to plant a “piece of home” in their new garden. Lyrical prose and lovely illustrations combine in a gentle, realistic story about finding connections in an unfamiliar world.
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A Pillow for My Mom
Charissa Sgouros
Through the changing seasons a young girl struggles with her concern and love for her mother who is sick in hospital.
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A Place in My Heart
Mary Grossnickle
Charlie, a chipmunk adopted by a family of squirrels, begins to wonder about his birthparents but is afraid that asking questions will upset his family.
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A Place in the World
Malcolm Frierson
Set in Baltimore, Ghana, and rural Georgia, a novel of love, marriage, betrayal, divorce, discovery, African heritage, international adoption, racism, and tragedy unfolds. Kwame and Evelyn adopt Kofi whom they adore. After divorce and remarriage, their nationalistic and interracial families clash. Caught between households, Kofi strives to find himself and battles dangerous anxiety attacks.
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A Place to Call Home
Jackie French Koller
Biracial Anna, 15, is a strong character in search of love & roots following sexual abuse & rejection from her own family. Caring for her two younger siblings after their unreliable mother abandons them, fifteen-year-old Anna discovers the difficulties of trying to be a parent.
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A Plan for Pops
Heather Smith
Lou spends every Saturday with Grandad and Pops. They walk to the library hand in hand, like a chain of paper dolls. Grandad reads books about science and design, Pops listens to rock and roll, and Lou bounces from lap to lap. But everything changes one Saturday. Pops has a fall. That night there is terrible news: Pops will be confined to a wheelchair, not just for now, but for always. Unable to cope with his new circumstances, he becomes withdrawn and shuts himself in his room. Hearing Grandad trying to cheer up Pops inspires Lou to make a plan. Using skills learned from Grandad, and with a little help from their neighbors, Lou comes up with a plan for Pops.
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Apt. 3
Ezra Jack Keats
On a rainy day two brothers try to discover who is playing the harmonica they hear in their apartment building.
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Archenemy
Paul Hoblin
When defender Addie turns down her teammate and close friend Eva's offer to be more than friends, she is at a loss for what to do when her former friend starts sending her mean notes and sabotaging her play on the field.
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A Real Christmas This Year
Karen Lynn Williams
Twelve-year-old Megan's efforts to provide a real Christmas for her multiply handicapped brother and the rest of the family cause problems with her best friend and some other schoolmates. Megan loves her little brother Kevin, but she still wishes for the kind of social and family life she could have if he weren't multi-handicapped. An accident causes her home life to become chaotic and unhappy again, but with determination and ingenuity--and in the true spirit of the season--Megan manages to make her Christmas dream come true.
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Are You a Boy or a Girl?
Karleen Pendleton Jimenez
Are you a boy or a girl? opens the conversation of what makes a boy a boy and a girl a girl. It is the story of a child thinking through who she is, a child learning through her mother's love how to be both strong and soft.
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Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?
Sarah Savage
When Tiny moves to a new town, Buster, the class bully, wants to know if Tiny is a boy or a girl but others wonder why it matters to him.
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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Benjamin Alire Senz
Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.
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Armond Goes to a Party: A Book about Asperger's and Friendship
Nancy Carlson
Armond doesn't want to go to Felicia's birthday party. Parties are noisy, disorganized, and smelly--all things that are hard for a kid with Asperger's. Worst of all is socializing with other kids. But with the support of Felicia and her mom, good friends who know how to help him, he not only gets through the party, but also has fun. When his mom picks him up, Armond admits the party was not easy, but he feels good that he faced the challenge--and that he's a good friend.
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Army Brats
Daphne Benedis-Grab
When the Bailey family moves into an army base in Virginia there are a lot of adjustments to make; twelve-year-old Tom runs afoul of the base school bully, ten-year-old Charlotte finds herself trying too hard to make friends with the "cool" girls, and six-year-old Rosie is just being difficult as usual--but they come together to investigate a mysterious building full of weird cages, and uncover Fort Patrick's secrets.
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A Safe Place
Maxine Trottier
To escape her father's abuse, Emily and her mother come to a shelter where they find a safe place to stay with other women and children in similar circumstances. At night, a little girl and her mother seek safety from an abusive daddy by going to a safe place, the white house on the hill.
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As Brave As You
Jason Reynolds
Scooping poop at his grandparent's house - that sure as heck wasn't the way eleven-year-old Genie expected to be spending his summer. But when his parents send him and his big brother, Ernie, to Virginia to experience the great (not!) outdoors, they're in for some big surprises. First, there are chores galore (picking peas, really?). Second, Grandpop just might be completely off his rocker. The man has a big ol' secret - and once Genie learns what it is, all of Grandpop's oddities start to make sense. Like why he locks himself up in a room that's filled with birds. And why he never - not ever, no sir, no how, no way - steps foot outside. On top of that, Grandpop has a crazy idea for how to celebrate Ernie's fourteenth birthday. Actually, to Genie it isn't so crazy, but Ernie thinks it's completely wack. Genie wonders if that's because Ernie isn't brave enough. but is being brave doing something? Or knowing when not to?
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Asha's Mums
Rosamund Elwin and Michele Paulse
Asha, an African-Canadian girl whose lesbian mums become an issue for the teacher and the curiosity of classmates, responds with clarity and assuredness that having two mums is no big deal--they are a family.
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A Shelter in Our Car
Monica Gunning
Since she left Jamaica for America after her father died, Zettie lives in a car with her mother while they both go to school and plan for a real home.
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Ashes to Asheville
Sarah Dooley
Twelve-year-old Fella is swept away on a wild road trip by her older sister Zany to fulfill their late mother's dying wish.
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A Silent Voice, Volume 1
Yoshitoki Oima
Shoya is a bully. When Shoko, a girl who can’t hear, enters his elementary school class, she becomes their favorite target, and Shoya and his friends goad each other into devising new tortures for her. But the children’s cruelty goes too far. Shoko is forced to leave the school, and Shoya ends up shouldering all the blame. Six years later, the two meet again. Can Shoya make up for his past mistakes, or is it too late?
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A Silent Voice, Volume 2
Yoshitoki Oima
It’s been five years since Shoya Ishida bullied Shoko Nishimiya so badly she left their elementary school, because of one simple difference between them: Shoya can hear, and Shoko can’t. In the intervening time, Shoya’s life has changed completely. Shunned by his friends, Shoya’s longed for the chance to make up for his cruelty. When it finally comes, will he find the voice to tell Shoko he’s changed? And will Shoko listen?