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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Babu's Song
Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen
In Tanzania, Bernardi's mute grandfather makes him a wonderful music box and then helps him realize his dream of owning a soccer ball and going to school.
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Baby's First Words
Stella Blackstone and Sunny Scribens
Brief text relates the daily activities of a city baby with two daddies by featuring terms for objects, actions, and sounds. On die-cut board pages with tabs.
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Bait
Alex Sanchez
Diego keeps getting into trouble because of his explosive temper until he finally finds a probation officer who helps him get to the root of his anger so that he can stop running from his past.
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Ball Don't Lie
Matt De La Pena
Sticky is a beat-around-the-head foster kid with nowhere to call home but the street, and an outer shell so tough that no one will take him in. He started out life so far behind the pack that the finish line seems nearly unreachable. He’s a white boy living and playing in a world where he doesn’t seem to belong. But Sticky can ball. And basketball might just be his ticket out . . . if he can only realize that he doesn’t have to be the person everyone else expects him to be.
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Ballerino Nate
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
After seeing a ballet performance, Nate decides he wants to learn ballet but he has doubts when his brother Ben tells him that only girls can be ballerinas.
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Beast
Brie Spangler
After falling off the roof, fifteen-year-old misfit Dylan must attend a therapy group for self-harmers where he meets Jamie, a beautiful and amazing person he does not know is transgender.
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Beautiful Music for Ugly Children
Kristin Cronn-Mills
Gabe has always identified as a boy, but he was born with a girl's body. With his new public access radio show gaining in popularity, Gabe struggles with romance, friendships, and parents--all while trying to come out as transgendered. An audition for a station in Minneapolis looks like his ticket to a better life in the big city. But his entire future is threatened when several violent guys find out Gabe, the popular DJ, is also Elizabeth from school.
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Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability
Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, and Michael Northen
Beauty is a verb is the first of its kind: a high-quality anthology of poetry by American poets with physical disabilities. Poems and essays alike consider how poetry, coupled with the experience of disability, speaks to the poetics of each poet included. The collection explores first the precursors whose poems had a complex (and sometimes absent) relationship with disability, such as Vassar Miller, Larry Eigner, and Josephine Miles. It continues with poets who have generated the Crip Poetics Movement, such as Petra Kuppers, Kenny Fries, and Jim Ferris. Finally, the collection explores the work of poets who don't necessarily subscribe to the identity of "crip-poetics" and have never before been published in this exact context. These poets include Bernadette Mayer, Rusty Morrison, Cynthia Hogue, and C.S. Giscombe. The book crosses poetry movements--from narrative to language poetry--and speaks to and about a number of disabilities including cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, multiple sclerosis, and aphasia due to stroke, among others.
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Beauty Queens
Libba Bray
The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream Pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner. What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program - or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan - or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?
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Because I Am Furniture
Thalia Chaltas
The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both relieved and neglected that her father abuses her brother and sister but ignores her, but when she catches him with one of her friends, she finally becomes angry enough to take action.
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Becoming Chloe
Catherine Ryan Hyde
A gay teenage boy and a fragile teenage girl meet while living on the streets of New York City and eventually decide to take a road trip across America to discover whether or not the world is a beautiful place.
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Becoming Naomi León
Pam Muñoz Ryan
Naomi Soledad León Outlaw has had a lot to contend with in her young life, her name for one. Then there are her clothes (sewn in polyester by Gram), her difficulty speaking up, and her status at school as "nobody special." But according to Gram's self-prophecies, most problems can be overcome with positive thinking. Luckily, Naomi also has her carving to strengthen her spirit. And life with Gram and her little brother, Owen, is happy and peaceful. That is, until their mother reappears for the first time in seven years, stirring up all sorts of questions and challenging Naomi to discover who she really is.
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Been Here All Along
Sandy Hall
Gideon always has a plan. His plans include running for class president, leading the yearbook committee, and having his choice of colleges. They do not include falling head over heels for his best friend and next-door neighbor, Kyle. It's a distraction. It's pointless, as Kyle is already dating the gorgeous and popular head cheerleader, Ruby. And Gideon doesn't know what to do. Kyle finally feels like he has a handle on life. He has a wonderful girlfriend, a best friend willing to debate the finer points of Lord of the Rings, and social acceptance as captain of the basketball team. Then both Ruby and Gideon start acting really weird, just as his spot on the team is threatened, and Kyle can't quite figure out what he did wrong.
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Before I Let Go
Marieke Nijkamp
Best friends Corey and Kyra were inseparable in their tiny snow-covered town of Lost Creek, Alaska. But as Kyra starts to struggle with her mental health, Corey's family moves away. Worried about what might happen in her absence, Corey makes Kyra promise that she'll stay strong during the long, dark winter. Then, just days before Corey is to visit, Kyra dies. Corey is devastated―and confused, because Kyra said she wouldn't hurt herself. The entire Lost community speaks in hushed tones, saying Kyra's death was meant to be. And they push Corey away like she's a stranger. The further Corey investigates―and the more questions she asks―the greater her suspicion grows. Lost is keeping secrets―chilling secrets. Can she piece together the truth about Kyra's death and survive her visit
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Beginnings: How Families Come to Be
Virginia Kroll
Parents and children discuss how their families came to be, covering birth families, adoptive families, two-parent families, and single parent families.
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Behind You
Jacqueline Woodson
After fifteen-year-old Jeremiah is mistakenly shot by police, the people who love him struggle to cope with their loss as they recall his life and death, unaware that 'Miah is watching over them.
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Being Emily
Rachel Gold
They say that whoever you are it's okay, you were born that way. Those words don't comfort Emily, because she was born Christopher and her insides know that her outsides are all wrong. They say that it gets better, be who are you and it'll be fine. For Emily, telling her parents who she really is means a therapist who insists Christopher is normal and Emily is sick. Telling her girlfriend means lectures about how God doesn't make that kind of mistake. Emily desperately wants high school in her small Minnesota town to get better. She wants to be the woman she knows is inside, but it's not until a substitute therapist and a girl named Natalie come into her life that she believes she has a chance of actually Being Emily. A story for anyone who has ever felt that the inside and outside don't match and no one else will understand
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Belinda's Bouquet
Lesléa Newman
Belinda's best friend Daniel, and Daniel's two mothers, help her to accept her body shape.
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Ben and the Sudden Too-Big Family
Colby Rodowsky
Until now, ten-year-old Ben has believed that life is made up of "all right" and "not all right" stuff, but when his father remarries and the couple adopts a Chinese baby, he wonders which kind of stuff will prevail.
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Beneath My Mother's Feet
Amjed Qamar
When her father is injured, fourteen-year-old Nazia is pulled away from school, her friends, and her preparations for an arranged marriage, to help her mother clean houses in a wealthy part of Karachi, Pakistan, where she finally rebels against the destiny that is planned for her.
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Benji, the Bad Day, and Me
Sally J. Pla
Nothing seems to be going right for Sammy today. At school, he got in trouble for kicking a fence, then the cafeteria ran out of pizza for lunch. After he walks home in the pouring rain, he finds his autistic little brother Benji is having a bad day too. On days like this, Benji has a special play-box where he goes to feel cozy and safe. Sammy doesn't have a special place, and he's convinced no one cares how he feels or even notices him. But somebody is noticing, and may just have an idea on how to help Sammy feel better.
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Benny Doesn't Like to Be Hugged
Zetta Elliott
A little girl uses rhyming verse to describe the unique traits of her autistic friend. Benny likes trains and cupcakes without sprinkles, but he can also be fussy sometimes. The narrator doesn’t mind, however, because “true friends accept each other just the way they are.” A gentle story encouraging children to appreciate and accept our differences.
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Ben's Family (All Kinds of Families)
Elliot Riley
Easy reader introduces a young baseball player and his mother, highlighting their family dynamics and celebrating diversity.
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Be Quiet, Marina!
Kirsten DeBear
A story of how two girls, one with cerebral palsy and one with Down syndrome, become friends.
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Best Best Colors
Eric Hoffman
Nate has trouble deciding what his favorite color is, but his two mammas help him realize that he does not have to have a best, best color.