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 One Where the Kid Nearly Jumps to His Death and Lands in California
Mary Hershey
Alastair, a thirteen-year-old who calls himself "Stump" because of his amputated leg, must face a summer at his wealthy but estranged father's beach house in Los Angeles, where he meets his stepmother, falls in love with a teenaged soap opera star, and decides to train for a race with a former Olympic swim coach.
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The Only Boy in Ballet Class
Denise Gruska
Tucker Dohr loves ballet but is constantly teased by football players his age for being a sissy. However, they see him in a whole new light when circumstances place him in a position to help them win the football championship.
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The Other F-Word
Natasha Friend
Milo has two great moms, but he's never known what it's like to have a dad. When Milo's doctor suggests asking his biological father to undergo genetic testing to shed some light on Milo's extreme allergies, he realizes this is a golden opportunity to find the man he's always wondered about. Hollis's mom Leigh hasn't been the same since her other mom, Pam, passed away seven years ago. But suddenly, Leigh seems happy—giddy, even—by the thought of reconnecting with Hollis's half-brother Milo. Hollis and Milo were conceived using the same sperm donor. They met once, years ago, before Pam died.
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The Other Half of My Heart
Sundee Tucker Frazier
Twin daughters of interracial parents, eleven-year-olds Keira and Minna have very different skin tones and personalities, but it is not until their African American grandmother enters them in the Miss Black Pearl Pre-Teen competition in North Carolina that red-haired and pale-skinned Minna realizes what life in their small town in the Pacific Northwest has been like for her more outgoing, darker-skinned sister.
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The Pants Project
Cat Clarke
A Transformer is a robot in disguise. Liv is a boy in disguise. It's that simple. Liv knows he was always meant to be a boy, but with his new school's terrible dress code, he can't even wear pants. Only skirts. Operation: Pants Project begins! The only way for Liv to get what he wants is to go after it himself. But to Liv, this isn't just a mission to change the school policy--it's a mission to change his life. And that's a pretty big deal. Award-wnning author Cat Clarke makes her middle-grade debut with this hilarious and heartfelt underdog story. Liv may not be an alien-fighting robot, but he is fighting to make the world a better place--one leg at a time.
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The Pea That was Me: An Egg Donation Story
Kimberly Kluger-Bell
Explains egg donation through pictures and simple words.
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The People of Twelve Thousand Winters
Trinka Hakes Noble
Ten-year-old Walking Turtle, of the Lenni-Lenape tribe, is close to his younger cousin, Little Talk, who has difficulty walking and worries about what will become of him when the time comes for Walking Turtle to leave his childhood friends to begin training at warrior school.
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
Charlie struggles to cope with complex world of high school as he deals with the confusions of sex and love, the temptations of drugs, and the pain of losing a close friend and a favorite aunt.
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The Pirate of Kindergarden
Georgle Ella Lyon
Ginny's eyes play tricks on her, making her see everything double, but when she goes to vision screening at school and discovers that not everyone sees this way, she learns that her double vision can be cured.
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The Poet X
Elizabeth Acevedo
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, Xiomara Batista has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. She pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers--especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. Mami is determined to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, and Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. When she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, she can't stop thinking about performing her poems.
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The Popularity Papers Book 2: The Long-Distance Dispatch between Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
After spending a year studying popularity, Julie and Lydia are finally ready to put their hard-earned lessons to use in junior high. But before they can conquer the world together, Lydia's mom gets a job in London.
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The Popularity Papers Book 3: Words of (Questionable) Wisdom from Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
Twelve-year-old best friends Julie and Lydia are reunited after six months apart, but the news that their friend Sukie's mother has died after a long illness causes them to reevaluate their goals and focus on being supportive of the friends they already have.
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The Popularity Papers Book 4: The Rocky Road Trip of Lydia Goldblatt & Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
It's summertime, and Julie and Lydia are going on a road trip! After all the ups and downs of their first year in junior high, they're looking forward to seeing the sights and getting some new perspective on their quest for popularity.
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The Popularity Papers Book 5: The Awesomely Awful Melodies of Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
Fresh from their epic summer road trip, Lydia and Julie are back and ready to take seventh grade by storm. Well, at least Lydia is. She wants to start a band and reinvent herself as a rock star. After making Lydia promise that this is absolutely not another disaster-waiting-to-happen scheme for popularity, Julie agrees. Add Roland (expert at the guitar-like hardingfele) and Jane (expert at drama)...and the Macramé Owls are born! Unfortunately, none of them are expert musicians. Despite their lack of skills, Lydia and Julie find themselves riding a wave of notoriety. The girls may have accidentally stumbled upon the secret to popularity in their new rock 'n' roll personas. But there's still the problem of actually playing their instruments.
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The Popularity Papers Book 6: Love and Other Fiascos with Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
When Julie and Roland become an official couple, Lydia and Julie try to find romantic guidance, while Lydia's mother announces her plans to marry Lydia's soccer coach, Eric.
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The Popularity Papers Book 7: The Less-Than-Hidden Secrets and Final Revelations of Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
Lydia and Julie have been through many adventures as they navigated junior high and the search for popularity, but as they near the end of seventh grade, life seems to be settling into a familiar rhythm. And then ... disaster strikes! Literally. The peaceful world of Hamlin Junior High is rocked when the students learn that they're going to have to play host to new students whose junior high school burned down. The outside threat bands the Hamlin kids together against a common enemy--for a while. When someone gets their hands on Lydia and Julie's notebook and starts papering the school with some of the girls' most private thoughts, no one from either school wants anything to do with them. With the big, combined-school dance looming, how can the girls stop the war and redeem their rotten reputations?
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The Popularity Papers: Research for the Social Improvement and General Betterment of Lydia Goldblatt & Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
Two best friends embark on a project to study the behavior and taste of the popular girls at their elementary school so that by the time they get to middle school they too will be in the right crowd. Novel appears in the form of a scrapbook.
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The Porcupine of Truth
Bill Konigsberg
Carson Smith isn't thrilled to be spending the summer with her estranged dad in Billings, Montana. But then he meets Aisha Stinson, the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. And the smartest. And the funniest. They connect like he never has with anyone. Also she's a lesbian. So there's that. Carson's dad is still bitter about the disappearance of his dad more than thirty years earlier. When Carson and Aisha discover a box full of cards from his grandfather, some of them recent, they realize the old man is still out there somewhere. What are two bored teenagers in the middle of nowhere to do? So Carson and Aisha begin a journey with no destination, to find a man who wanted to be lost, in an unreliable Dodge Neon, with one very prickly mascot. And what comes next is an extraordinary, enlightening, hilarious, inspiring, complete and utter mindblower of a road trip that will transform both their lives.
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The Possibility of Somewhere
Julia Day
Although on opposite sides of every social hierarchy their friends and families can imagine, including race, class, and social status, popular Ash Gupta, the son of wealthy, immigrant Asian-Indian parents, and anti-social Eden Moore, whose biggest goal is to escape her family's poverty and trailer-park existence, grow close as they compete to become class valedictorian.
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The Proposal (Christy Series #5)
C. Archer and Catherine Marshall
Blinded in a riding accident, Christy has self-doubts about resuming her career and accepting the town minister's marriage proposal.
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The Pros of Cons
Allison Cherry, Lindsay Ribar, and Michelle Schusterman
Phoebe Byrd, Vanessa Montoya-O'Callaghan, and Callie Buchannan are three teenagers with very different interests and somewhat different problems, but today they are all in Orlando to attend different conventions/competitions--and when a crazy mix-up in the hotel lobby brings the three girls together, they form an unlikely friendship against the chaotic background of the Orlando convention scene.
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The Purim Superhero
Elisabeth Kushner
Nate wants to dress as an alien for Purim but his friend wants him to wear a superhero costume like the other boys, so Nate seeks guidance from his Daddy and Abba, who advise that being yourself makes you stronger.
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The Quiet Place
Sarah Stewart
When Isabel and her family move to the United States, Isabel misses all the things she left behind in Mexico, especially her aunt Lupita and hearing people speak Spanish. But she also experiences some wonderful new things -- her first snow storm and a teacher who does not speak Spanish but has a big smile. Even better, Papa and her brother Chavo help her turn a big box into her own quiet place, where she keeps her books and toys and writes letters to Aunt Lupita. As she decorates and adds more and more on to her quiet place, it is here that Isabel feels the most at home in her new country while she learns to adjust to the changes in her life.
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The Rainbow Cubby House
Brenna Harding and Vicki Harding
A girl, her two moms, her friend Jed and his two dads build a cubby house in the backyard.
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The Red Blanket
Eliza Thomas
Tells the story of a single woman who goes to China to adopt a baby. Based on the author's life.