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.

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Separation

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My Mother's House, My Father's House

C.B. Christiansen

A child describes having two different houses in which to live, "my mother's house" and "my father's house," and what it is like to travel back and forth between them.
My Parents are Getting Divorced: How to Keep It Together When Your Mom and Dad are Splitting Up

Florence Cadier and Melissa Day

Explains the feelings and questions shared by young adults whose parents are getting divorced, the changes that could occur, and how to deal with them. Includes hotline numbers.
My Time as Caz Hazard

Tanya Lloyd Kyi

Caz thinks she has a pretty good reason when she punches her boyfriend in the face, but she gets expelled anyway. Moving to a new school, she is told she is dyslexic and sent to special education classes. Caz tries to fit in and get by while suffering the taunts and abuse that others throw at the students in her class. Her friendship with Amanda leads her into new territory--shoplifting and skipping school. Coupled with her parents' impending separation, her life is spiraling out of control.
Nico and Tucker

Rachel Gold

The decision can't be put off any longer. A medical crisis turns Nico's body into a battleground, crushing Nico under conflicting family pressures. Having lived genderqueer for years, Nico is used to getting strong reactions (and uninvited opinions!) from everyone, but it is Tucker's reaction that hurts the most. Jess Tucker didn't mean to hurt Nico, but she panicked. And after the worst year of her life, she's hanging on by a thread. Forget recovery time and therapy, she needs to put the past behind her and be normal again. But when her relationship with Nico becomes more than she can handle, she cuts and runs.
No Fixed Address

Susin Nielsen

Twelve-year-old Felix's appearance on a television game show reveals that he and his mother have been homeless for a while, but also restores some of his faith in other people.
Notes on a Near-Life Experience

Olivia Birdsall

Mia never thought she'd be the child of a broken home. Yet when she's 15 years old, one day her father just up and moves out. As her family life crumbles, her love life is finally coming together. Julian, her brother Allen's best friend and her longtime crush, has finally noticed her—and being with Julian makes her happier than she can put into words. Meanwhile, her mother has disappeared into work, her brother is skipping school and acting weird, and her father is cohabitating with a frighteningly sexy Peruvian woman named Paloma. Mia wishes the divorce would just go away so she could focus on Julian...but she can't ignore her problems forever. In this honest, witty, utterly accessible winner of the Delacorte Press Contest, first-time author Olivia Birdsall creates an authentic and lovable teenager in Mia.
Not Even Bones

Rebecca Schaeffer

Nita's mother hunts monsters and, after Nita dissects and packages them, sells them online, but when Nita follows her conscience to help a live monster escape, she is sold on the black market in his place.
Nothing Happened

Molly Booth

Modern-day retelling of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing taking place at an idyllic summer camp where the counselors have to cope with simmering drama.
Oliver at the Window

Elizabeth Shreeve

When Oliver's parents move into separate houses, he spends a lot of time looking out of windows with his pet lion as he adjusts to a new preschool and to living in two places.
One Crazy Summer

Rita Williams-Garcia

In the summer of 1968, after traveling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.
One-Third Nerd

Gennifer Choldenko

Fifth grade is not for amateurs, according to Liam. Luckily, he knows that being more than one-third nerd is not cool. Liam lives in the Bay area near San Francisco with his mom and two younger sisters. Dakota is fascinated by science and has a big personality but struggles to make friends; Izzy, a child with Down syndrome, makes friends easily and notices things that go past everyone else. Dad lives across town, but he's over a lot. And then there's Cupcake, their lovable German shepherd, who guards their basement apartment.
Oranges on Golden Mountain

Elizabeth Partridge

Being sent from China to work with his uncle on Golden Mountain, Jo Lee's mother gives him words of encouragement to see him through the difficult transition to his new life in a new world in late-nineteenth-century California.
Parachutes

Kelly Yang

They’re called parachutes: teenagers dropped off to live in private homes and study in the United States while their wealthy parents remain in Asia. Claire Wang never thought she’d be one of them, until her parents pluck her from her privileged life in Shanghai and enroll her at a high school in California. Suddenly she finds herself living in a stranger’s house, with no one to tell her what to do for the first time in her life. She soon embraces her newfound freedom, especially when the hottest and most eligible parachute, Jay, asks her out. Dani De La Cruz, Claire’s new host sister, couldn’t be less thrilled that her mom rented out a room to Claire. An academic and debate team star, Dani is determined to earn her way into Yale, even if it means competing with privileged kids who are buying their way to the top. But Dani’s game plan veers unexpectedly off course when her debate coach starts working with her privately. As they steer their own distinct paths, Dani and Claire keep crashing into one another, setting a course that will change their lives forever.
Playground: The Mostly True Story of a Former Bully

Curtis 50 Cent Jackson and Laura Moser

After beating up Maurice on the playground, Butterball is forced to see the school therapist.
Pulp

Robin Talley

In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet Jones keeps the love she shares with her best friend Marie a secret. It’s not easy being gay in Washington, DC, in the age of McCarthyism, but when she discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in Janet. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a newfound ambition to write and publish her own story, she risks exposing herself—and Marie—to a danger all too real. Sixty-two years later, Abby Zimet can’t stop thinking about her senior project and its subject—classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Between the pages of her favorite book, the stresses of Abby’s own life are lost to the fictional hopes, desires and tragedies of the characters she’s reading about. She feels especially connected to one author, a woman who wrote under the pseudonym “Marian Love,” and becomes determined to track her down and discover her true identity. In this novel told in dual narratives, New York Times bestselling author Robin Talley weaves together the lives of two young women connected across generations through the power of words. A stunning story of bravery, love, how far we’ve come and how much farther we have to go.
Puppy Fat

Morris Gleitzman

Keith worries about his separated parents and wants to improve their appearance so they will find new partners, but he realizes that he cannot change them into different people.
Rainy Day

Emma Haughton

Shortly after his parents have separated, Nick visits his father on a gray, rainy day and they take a long walk in the storm.
Raymie Nightingale

Kate DiCamillo

Hoping that if she wins a local beauty pageant her father will come home, Raymie practices twirling a baton and performing good deeds as she is drawn into an unlikely friendship with a drama queen and a saboteur.
Revolution

Jennifer Donnelly

An angry, grieving seventeen-year-old musician facing expulsion from her prestigious Brooklyn private school travels to Paris to complete a school assignment and uncovers a diary written during the French revolution by a young actress attempting to help a tortured, imprisoned little boy--Louis Charles, the lost king of France.
Ruby, the Red-Hot Witch at Bloomingdale's

Marlene Fanta Shyer

When Ruby, the witch who works at Bloomingdale's, cures her younger brother's nervous hiccups, thirteen-year-old Petra wonders if Ruby's magic can get her separated parents back together.
Saving Baby Doe

Danette Vigilante

Lionel and Anisa are the best of friends and have seen each other through some pretty tough times--Anisa's dad died and Lionel's dad left, which is like a death for Lionel. They stick together no matter what. So when Lionel suggests a detour through a local construction site on their way home, Anisa doesn't say no. And that's where Lionel and Anisa make a startling discovery--a baby abandoned in a port-o-potty. Anisa and Lionel spring into action. And in saving Baby Doe, they end up saving so much more.
Seven Ways We Lie

Riley Redgate

A chance encounter tangles the lives of seven high school students, each resisting the allure of one of the seven deadly sins, and each telling their story from their seven distinct points of view.
Shattered

Kathi Baron

Teen violin prodigy Cassie has been tiptoeing around her father, whose moods have become increasingly explosive. After he destroys her beloved and valuable violin, Cassie, shocked, runs away, eventually seeking refuge in a homeless shelter. She later learns that her father, a former violinist, was physically beaten as a child by her grandfather, a painful secret he's kept hidden from his family, and the cause of his violent outbursts. With all of their lives shattered in some way, Cassie's family must struggle to repair their broken relationships. As Cassie moves forward, she ultimately finds a way to help others, having developed compassion through her own painful experiences. Written in lyrical prose, Shattered tells the moving story of how one girl finds inner strength through music.
Sibling Split: Family Fix-It Plan

M. G. Higgins

Siblings Arnie and Annabelle are horrified by the news that their parents are separating, and even more devastated at the idea that they are being split up, so they decide to create a video montage of their favorite family memories in the hope that it will convince their parents to stay together.
Sibling Split: Party of Nine

M. G. Higgins

It is the first Thanksgiving since their parents split up, and twelve-year-old Arnie has come to the farm to spend the weekend with eleven-year-old Annabelle and their father at the farm--and when it starts to looks like it will just be the three of them, Arnie and Annabelle decide to invite several of their neighbors over for the feast.