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.
Browse by Family Relationship:
Single Parent
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The Great Shelby Holmes
Elizabeth Eulberg
Nine-year-old Shelby Holmes, the best detective in her Harlem neighborhood, and her new easy-going friend from downstairs, eleven-year-old John Watson, become partners in a dog-napping case.
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The Grooming of Alice
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
During the summer between eighth and ninth grades, Alice and her friends Pamela and Elizabeth decide to improve themselves through exercise.
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The History of Us
Nyrae Dawn
Eighteen-year-old Bradley Collins came out a year ago and hasn't looked back since. Who cares if he doesn't know any other gay people? Bradley has friends and basketball -- that's all he needs. Even if that means always sitting on the sidelines when the guys go out looking for girls. When cute film-boy TJ tries to flirt with Bradley while his friends are doing their thing, he freaks. Yeah, he's gay, but he's never had the opportunity to go out with a boy before. He's never had to worry about how his friends will react to seeing him with a guy. Bradley accompanies TJ on a road trip to film TJ's senior project documentary. In each city they visit, they meet with people from different walks of life, and Bradley learns there's a whole lot more to being honest about himself than just coming out. He still has to figure out who he really is and learn to be okay with what he discovers.
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The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus, #4)
Rick Riordan
Greek and Roman demigods from the Prophecy of Seven must work together to seal the Doors of Death--and help Percy and Annabeth escape the Underworld in the process
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The House on Mango Street
Sandra Cisneros
For Esperanza, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, life is an endless landscape of concrete and run-down tenements, and she tries to rise above the hopelessness.
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The Inexplicable Logic of My Life
Benjamin Alire Saenz
A story set on the American border with Mexico, about family and friendship, life and death, and one teen struggling to understand what his adoption does and doesn't mean about who he is.
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The Journey
Francesca Sanna
With haunting echoes of the current refugee crisis, this beautifully illustrated book explores the unimaginable decisions made as a family leave their home and everything they know to escape the turmoil and tragedy brought by war. This book will stay with you long after the last page is turned.
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The Last True Love Story
Brendan Kiely
Hendrix and Corrina bust Hendrix's grandfather out of assisted living, and leave LA for New York in pursuit of freedom, truth, and love.
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The Little Green Goose
Adele Sansone and J. Alison James
Mr. Goose finds an abandoned egg, hatches it, and raises a peculiar green-skinned long-tailed chick, who worries about his identity but comes to recognize that he has a loving parent.
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The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1)
Rick Riordan
Jason, Piper, and Leo, three students from a school for "bad kids," find themselves at Camp Half-Blood, where they learn that they are demigods and begin a quest to free Hera, who has been imprisoned by Mother Earth herself.
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The Lost Marble Notebook of Forgotten Girl and Random Boy
Maria Jaskulka
Forgotten Girl is going through the most difficult time of her life-- the breakup of her parents, and her mom's resulting depression. She meets Random Boy, a hot guy who, like her, feels like an outcast and secretly writes poetry to deal with everything going on in his life. They come from opposite sides of the tracks, yet they find understanding in each other when they lay bare their life stories through the poetry they write and share with each other.
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The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3)
Rick Riordan
Uniting with Jason, Piper, and Leo after the dangerous quest in "The Son of Neptune," Percy, Hazel, and Frank wonder who will be chosen to fulfill the Prophecy of Seven, completing their group's number, and sail with them to an ancient land to find the mysterious Doors of Death.
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The Meaning of Birds
Jaye Robin Brown
Before: Jess has always struggled with the fire inside her. But when she meets Vivi, everything changes. As they fall for each other, Vivi helps Jess deal with her anger and pain and encourages her to embrace her artistic talent. And suddenly Jess’s future is a blank canvas, filled with possibilities. After: When Vivi unexpectedly dies, Jess’s perfect world is erased. As she spirals out of control, Jess pushes away everyone around her and throws out her plans for art school. Because art is Vivi and Vivi is gone forever. Right when Jess feels at her lowest, she makes a surprising friend who just might be able to show her a new way to channel her rage, passion, and creativity. But will Jess ever be able to forge a new path for herself without Vivi? A beautiful exploration of first love and first loss, this novel effortlessly weaves together past and present to tell a profound story about how you can become whole again when it seems like you’ve lost the most important part of yourself.
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The Music of What Happens
Bill Konigsberg
It is summer in Phoenix, and seventeen-year-old Maximo offers to help Jordan, a fellow student in high school, with the food truck that belonged to Jordan's deceased father, and which may be the only thing standing between homelessness for Jordan and his mom; the boys are strongly attracted to each other, but as their romance develops it is threatened by the secrets they are hiding--and by the racism and homophobia of those around them.
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The Night Diary
Veera Hiranandani
It's 1947, and India, newly independent of British rule, has been separated into two countries: Pakistan and India. The divide has created much tension between Hindus and Muslims, and hundreds of thousands are killed crossing borders. Half-Muslim, half-Hindu twelve-year-old Nisha doesn't know where she belongs, or what her country is anymore. When Papa decides it's too dangerous to stay in what is now Pakistan, Nisha and her family become refugees and embark first by train but later on foot to reach her new home. The journey is long, difficult, and dangerous, and after losing her mother as a baby, Nisha can't imagine losing her homeland, too. But even if her country has been ripped apart, Nisha still believes in the possibility of putting herself back together.
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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 Side of Dark
Sarah Smith
Since losing both of her parents, fifteen-year-old Katie can see and talk to ghosts, which makes her a loner until fellow student Law sees her drawing of a historic house and together they seek a treasure rumored to be hidden there by illegal slave-traders.
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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.