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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This is Kind of an Epic Love Story

Kheryn Callender

Budding screenwriter Nate, sixteen, finds his conviction that happy endings do not happen in real life sorely tested when his childhood best friend and crush, Oliver James Hernandez, moves back to town
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.
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.
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.
Two Naomis

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and Audrey Vernick

Other than their first names, Naomi Marie and Naomi Edith are sure they have nothing in common, and they wouldn't mind keeping it that way. Naomi Marie starts clubs at the library and adores being a big sister. Naomi Edith loves quiet Saturdays and hanging with her best friend in her backyard. And while Naomi Marie's father lives a few blocks away, Naomi Edith wonders how she's supposed to get through each day a whole country apart from her mother. When Naomi Marie's mom and Naomi Edith's dad get serious about dating, each girl tries to cling to the life she knows and loves. Then their parents push them into attending a class together, where they might just have to find a way to work with each other--and maybe even join forces to find new ways to define family.
Two White Rabbits

Jairo Buitrago and Elisa Amado

A young child describes what it is like to be a migrant as she and her father travel north toward the U.S. border. They travel mostly on the roof of a train known as The Beast, but the little girl doesn't know where they are going. She counts the animals by the road, the clouds in the sky, the stars. Sometimes she sees soldiers. She sleeps, dreaming that she is always on the move, although sometimes they are forced to stop and her father has to earn more money before they can continue their journey.
Tyler Buckspan

Jere' M. Fishback

Fifteen-year-old Tyler Buckspan lives with his mom and grandmother in 1960s Cassadaga, a Florida community where spiritual "mediums" ply their trade. The mediums--Tyler's grandmother among them--read palms and tarot cards, conduct seances and speak with the dead. Tyler's a loner, a bookish boy with few interests, until his half-brother Devin, nineteen and a convicted arsonist, comes to live in Tyler's home. For years, Tyler has ignored his attraction to other boys. But with Devin in the house, Tyler can't deny his urges any longer. He falls hopelessly in love with his miscreant half-brother, and with the sport of basketball, once Devin teaches Tyler the finer points of the game. In a time when love between men was forbidden, even criminalized, can Tyler find the love he needs from another boy? And is Devin a person to be trusted? Is he truly clairvoyant, or simply a con artist playing Tyler and others for fools? What does Devin really know about a local murder? And can Tyler trust his own psychic twinges?
Unbecoming

Jenny Downham

Life has just become very complicated for seventeen-year-old Katie; her father walked out a year ago, her mother is stressed out, her brother is a "special needs" teenager, and she is caring for the maternal grandmother she has never met, who is suffering from Alzheimer's--and Katie has a secret of her own that she cannot reveal.
Unbelievably Boring Bart

James Patterson and Duane Swierczynski

Invisible creatures are attacking the school and 12-year-old Bartholomew Bean is the only one who can stop them! Okay, so maybe Bart is only a hero in the video game app he created. But if he reveals his identity as the genius behind the game, he'll become the most popular kid in school! Or he could secretly use the game to get back at his bullies. Press Button A- Reveal. Press Button B- Revenge. Which would you choose?
Under Rose-Tainted Skies

Louise Gornall

Norah has agoraphobia and OCD. When groceries are left on the porch, she can't step out to get them. Struggling to snag the bags with a stick, she meets Luke. He's sweet and funny, and he just caught her fishing for groceries. Because of course he did. Norah can't leave the house, but can she let someone in? As their friendship grows deeper, Norah realizes Luke deserves a normal girl. One who can lie on the front lawn and look up at the stars. One who isn't so screwed up. Can she let him go, or will she find the strength to face her demons?
Vengeance Road

Erin Bowman

When Kate Thompson’s father is killed by the notorious Rose Riders for a mysterious journal that reveals the secret location of a gold mine, the eighteen-year-old disguises herself as a boy and takes to the gritty plains looking for answers and justice. What she finds are devious strangers, dust storms, and a pair of brothers who refuse to quit riding in her shadow. But as Kate gets closer to the secrets about her family, she gets closer to the truth about herself and must decide if there's room for love in a heart so full of hate.
Walk with Me

Jairo Buitrago

A little girl imagines a lion taking the place of her father who no longer lives with her family, an animal that keeps her safe on her travels from school to home.
We Are Family

Patricia Hegarty

Explore the differences and similarities of eight families in this gentle, rhyming picture book.
We Are the Ants

Shaun David Hutchinson

Abducted by aliens periodically throughout his youth, Henry Denton is informed by his erstwhile captors that they will end the world in 144 days unless he stops them by deciding that humanity is worth saving.
We Belong Together: A Book About Adoption and Families

Todd Parr

The joy of adoption and bringing families together is presented in this tale.
Welcome to the Family

Mary Hoffman

Introduces different types of households and discusses families with children, adoption, foster parents, same-sex parents, and fertility treatments.
Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?

Kathleen Collins

Now available in Ecco's Art of the Story series: a never-before-published collection of stories from a brilliant yet little known African American artist and filmmaker-a contemporary of revered writers including Toni Cade Bambara, Laurie Colwin, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Grace Paley-whose prescient work has recently resurfaced to wide acclaim. Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins's stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues-race, gender, family, and sexuality-that shape the ordinary moments in our lives. In "The Uncle," a young girl who idolizes her handsome uncle and his beautiful wife makes a haunting discovery about their lives. In "Only Once," a woman reminisces about her charming daredevil of a lover and his ultimate-and final-act of foolishness. Collins's work seamlessly integrates the African-American experience in her characters' lives, creating rich, devastatingly familiar, full-bodied men, women, and children who transcend the symbolic, penetrating both the reader's head and heart. Both contemporary and timeless, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love' is a major addition to the literary canon, and is sure to earn Kathleen Collins the widespread recognition she is long overdue.
What is a Family? A Question & Answer Book

Tamia Sheldon

Featuring Waldorf-style illustrations and depictions of families of all shapes, sizes and colors, this book gets kids talking about their own families while opening their eyes to the fact that even though families don't always look the same, they all share one special thing: love.
What Jaime Saw

Carolyn Coman

Having fled to a family friend's hillside trailer after his mother's boyfriend tried to throw his baby sister against a wall, nine-year-old Jamie finds himself living an existence full of uncertainty and fear.
What the Night Sings

Vesper Stamper

Liberated from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in 1945, Gerta has lost her family and everything she knew. Without her Papa, her music, or even her true identity, she must move past the task of surviving and onto living her life. Gerta meets Lev, a fellow teen survivor, and Michah, who helps Jews reach Palestine. With a newfound Jewish identity she never knew she had, and a return to the life of music she thought she lost forever, Gerta must choose how to build a new future.
White Oleander

Janet Fitch

When Ingrid, a brilliant but obsessed poet, is sent to prison for murder, her only child Astrid must find a place for herself as she journeys through a series of foster homes. With determination and humor, Astrid confronts the challenges of loneliness and poverty, and strives to learn who a motherless child in an indifferent world can become.
Who's in a Family?

Robert Skutch

Who is in a family, and in particular, who is in your family? Chances are, your family is unique, like no one else's, and that's just fine!
Why Don't I Have a Daddy? A Story of Donor Conception

George Anne Clay

As the little lion cub notices all different types of families, he starts to question his own family. His family consists of his mother and him. The little cub learns that while there is no "daddy" in his family, there is a donor lion who made his life possible. Through his mother's love and nurturing, the lion cub understands how special he and his family are.
Will

Maria Boyd

Seventeen-year-old Will's behavior has been getting him in trouble at his all-boys school in Sydney, Australia, but his latest punishment, playing in the band for a musical production, gives him new insights into his fellow students and helps him cope with an incident he has tried to forget.
Willful Machines

Tim Floreen

In a near-future America, a sentient computer program named Charlotte has turned terrorist, but Lee Fisher, the closeted son of an ultraconservative President, is more concerned with keeping his Secret Service detail from finding out about his developing romance with Nico, the new guy at school. But when the spider-like robots that roam the school halls begin acting even stranger than usual, Lee realizes he is Charlotte's next target.