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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Through My Window
Tony Bradman
When Jo is sick and has to stay home from school, her mother promises her a special surprise, and all day long she waits eagerly to see what it might be.
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Through the Eyes of a Child
Jimena Licitra
William was a happy little boy who lived with his parents in a green house with a lovely little garden, decorated with paper flowers. But one day everything changed. It was as if he'd been torn in two and turned into two different kids: one who went with his dad, and another who stayed with his mom. Through the Eyes of a Child reminds us of the importance of communicating, and that after a change in a family's structure, a child can feel “whole" again and grow up happily...even though his parents have separated.
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Thursday with Helenna and Alex
Phylliss DelGreco, Jaclyn Roth, and Kathryn Silverio
In "Thursday with Helenna and Alex," Jessie has a play date with two of her best friends. As the children conduct an "archeological dig" in Helenna's backyard (with the energetic and hilarious help of Buddy, the dog), they uncover some surprising artifacts and discover the real key to their friendship. "Thursday with Helenna and Alex" is the fourth book in The Jessie Books series, which offers an inspiring story for each day of the week, featuring a precocious little girl who lives with her two moms in Queens, New York.
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Tiger's Fall
Molly Bang
After eleven-year-old Lupe is partially paralyzed in an accident in her Mexican village, other handicapped people help her realize that her life can still have purpose.
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Tigger And Jasper's New Home
Cheryl Gillespie
A heart warming story of two kittens who through amusing happenings in their new home soon learn that Christie, their guardian, is blind.Sharing her true experiences of Tigger and Jasper, the author, blind from early childhood, gently acquaints children to Christie, a young blind woman.With expression and humor, the story comes to life as captivated by the brilliant illustrations of Michael LeBlanc.
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Tight Times
Barbara Shook Hazen
A small boy, not allowed to have a dog because times are tight, finds a starving kitten in a trash can on the same day his father loses his job.
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Tillmon County Fire
Pamela Ehrenberg
In tiny Tillmon County, where it seems like nothing ever happens, a mysterious fire rocks the lives of the teenagers who live there. Who set the fire that night, and more importantly, who owns the reasons behind it? As the story unfolds, the lines between truth and fiction, motive and happenstance, guilt and innocence blur. This novel-in-stories is told sequentially in the voices of its disparate cast of characters: a frustrated adoptee, a gay teenager, a big-city kid who is new in town and wishes he were back in Manhattan, a pregnant store clerk, and a boy with autism who is more at the center of events than he imagines.
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Tilt
Ellen Hopkins
Three teens, connected by their parents' bad choices, tell in their own voices of their lives and loves as Shane finds his first boyfriend, Mikayla discovers that love can be pushed too far, and Harley loses herself in her quest for new experiences.
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Toby's Doll's House
Ragnhild Scamell
Even though all Toby wants for his birthday is a dollhouse, his relatives give him a fort, and a farm, and a multi-level parking lot.
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Tomboy Trouble
Sharon Dennis Wyeth
When Georgia, an eight-year-old girl, cuts her hair very short and plays baseball, the children in her new school ask her if she's a boy.
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Top Ten
Katie Cotugno
Ryan McCullough and Gabby Hart are the unlikeliest of best friends. Prickly, anxious Gabby would rather do literally anything than go to a party. Ultra-popular Ryan is a hockey star who can get any girl he wants and frequently does. But somehow their relationship just works; from dorky Monopoly nights to rowdy house parties to the top ten lists they make about everything under the sun. Now, on the night of high school graduation, everything is suddenly changing--in their lives, and in their relationship. As they try to figure out what they mean to each other and where to go from here, they make a final top ten list: this time, counting down the top ten moments of their friendship.
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Totally Joe
James Howe
As a school assignment, a thirteen-year-old boy writes an alphabiography--life from A to Z--and explores issues of friendship, family, school, and the challenges of being a gay teenager.
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Touch Blue
Cynthia Lord
When the state of Maine threatens to shut down their island's one-room schoolhouse because of dwindling enrollment, eleven-year-old Tess, a strong believer in luck, and her family take in a trumpet-playing foster child, to increase the school's population.
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Touching Snow
M. Sindy Felin
After her stepfather is arrested for child abuse, thirteen-year-old Karina's home life improves but while the severity of her older sister's injuries and the urging of her younger sister, their uncle, and a friend tempt her to testify against him, her mother and other well-meaning adults pursuade her to claim responsibility.
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Tricks (Tricks #1)
Ellen Hopkins
Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching…for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don’t expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words “I love you” are said for all the wrong reasons.Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story—a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. A story about kids figuring out what sex and love are all about, at all costs, while asking themselves, “Can I ever feel okay about myself?”
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Trouper
Meg Kearney
Trooper, a three-legged dog, remembers his life as a stray, before he was adopted.
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True Believer
Virginia Euwer Wolff
Living in the inner city amidst guns and poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you make it--an occasion to rise to.
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True Letters from a Fictional Life
Kenneth Logan
If you asked anyone in his small Vermont town, they'd tell you the facts: James Liddell, star athlete, decent student, and sort-of boyfriend to cute, peppy Theresa, is a happy, funny, carefree guy. But whenever James sits down at his desk to write, he tells a different story. As he fills his drawers with letters to the people in his world -- letters he never intends to send -- he spills the truth: he's trying hard, but he just isn't into Theresa. It's his friend, a boy, who lingers in his thoughts. James's secret letters are his safe space -- but his truth can't stay hidden for long. Will he come clean to his parents, his teammates, and himself, or is he destined to live a life of fiction?
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Truth and Salsa
Linda Lowery
A spirited young girl must travel far from home to finally find herself. Mexico is a long way from Kalamazoo-and not just in terms of miles. Almost-thirteen-year-old Hayley Flynn is spending six months with her eccentric grandmother in the rural mountain town of San Miguel. Her father recently deserted the family and Hayley's mom needs time to, as she puts it, "work things through." Down in Mexico, everyone calls Hayley by her new, more glamorous chosen name, Margarita, and life is surprisingly exciting-exotic birds, beautiful butterflies, holidays, colorful fiestas, and new friends like Lili. Hayley and Lili even win parts as extras in a Hollywood movie being filmed in the town. But there are also difficult lessons to be learned. Poverty and unemployment send Lili's father and other men from the village to Michigan to work as migrant workers so they can send money back home to their anxious families. Meanwhile Hayley is on the lookout for la fantasma (the ghost) that is said to haunt her grandma's house. With Lili's help she solves the mystery-and prepares for a new life with her mom back in the States.
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Tuesday with Mommy and Pterodactyis
Phylliss DelGreco, Jaclyn Roth, and Kathryn Silverio
In "Tuesday with Mommy...and Pterodactyls," Jessie visits the big museum in the city and is completely shocked to see that real dinosaurs are much larger and more frightening than her dinosaur toys at home. With Mommy’s help, Jessie makes parallels between the dinosaurs and herself, and is able not only to overcome her fears, but also to soar with her favorites, the pterodactyls. "Tuesday with Mommy...and Pterodactyls" is the second book in The Jessie Books series, which offers an inspiring story for each day of the week, featuring a precocious little girl who lives with her two moms in Queens, New York.
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Tutus Aren't My Style
Linda Skeers
When she receives a ballerina costume from her uncle, Emma, who does not know how to be a ballerina, gets a lot of advice from friends and family.
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Twenty Yawns
Jane Smiley
Featuring lyrical text and beautiful illustrations, this bedtime tale from Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley and Caldecott Honor recipient Lauren Castillo evokes the splashy fun of the beach and the quietude of a moonlit night, with twenty yawns sprinkled in for children to discover and count. As her mom reads a bedtime story, Lucy drifts off. But later, she awakens in a dark, still room, and everything looks mysterious. How will she ever get back to sleep?
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Two Boys Kissing
David Levithan
A chorus of men who died of AIDS observes and yearns to help a cross-section of today's gay teens who navigate new love, long-term relationships, coming out, self-acceptance, and more in a society that has changed in many ways.
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Two Dads: A Book About Adoption
Carolyn Robertson
Having two dads is double the fun! Many families are different. This family has two dads. A beautifully illustrated, affirming story of life with two dads, written from the perspective of their adopted child.
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Two Homes
Claire Masurel
A young boy named Alex enjoys the homes of both of his parents who live apart but love Alex very much.