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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Mighty Jack and the Goblin King
Ben Hatke
Like a bolt from the blue, Jack's little sister Maddy is gone―carried into another realm by an ogre. When Jack and Lilly follow Maddy’s captor through the portal, they are ready for anything . . . except what they find waiting for them in the floating crossroads between worlds. Even the power of their magic plants may not be enough to get them back to earth alive. Alone and injured, Jack and Lilly must each face their own monsters―as well as giants who grind the bones of human children to feed their “beast” and a fearsome goblin king in the sewers down below. But when Jack finds himself in a tough spot, help comes from the most unlikely person: the goblin king!
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Milly, Molly and Different Dads
Gill Pittar
Milly and Molly learn how different dads can be. The story teaches about the diversity and individual differences and to accept everyone inspite of it.
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Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: The Diary of Bess Brennan
Barry Denenberg
In 1932, a twelve-year-old girl who lost her sight in an accident keeps a diary, recorded by her twin sister, in which she describes life at Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts.
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Missing in Action
Dean Hughes
While his father is missing in action in the Pacific during World War II, twelve-year-old Jay moves with his mother to small-town Utah, where he sees prejudice from both sides, as a part-Navajo himself and through an unlikely friendship with Japanese American Ken from the nearby internment camp.
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Monday is One Day
Arthur A. Levine
A rhyming countdown of the days of the week as a father and child find ways to spend time together while waiting for the weekend.
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Money Hungry
Sharon Flake
All thirteen-year-old Raspberry can think of is making money so that she and her mother never have to worry about living on the streets again.
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More Happy Than Not
Adam Silvera
After enduring his father's suicide, his own suicide attempt, broken friendships, and more in the Bronx projects, Aaron Soto, sixteen, is already considering the Leteo Institute's memory-alteration procedure when his new friendship with Thomas turns to unrequited love.
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Motherbridge of Love
Xinran .
Featured in Time Magazine's Top Ten Children's Books of 2007, this beautiful poem celebrates the bond between parent and adopted child in a special way. Through the exchanges, between a little girl born in China and her adoptive parent, this title offers a poignant and inspiring message to adoptive parents and children all over the world.
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Mustafa
Marie-Loise Gay
After leaving his war-torn country with his family, Mustafa visits a park near his new home and finds beautiful flowers, lady bugs, fall leaves, and finally, a friend.
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My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life
Rachel Cohn
On her sixteenth birthday, Elle Zoellner leaves the foster care system to live with the father she never knew in Tokyo, Japan.
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My Brother’s Husband, Vol. 2
Gengoroh Tagame
As Mike continues his journey of discovery concerning Ryoji's past, Yaichi gradually comes to understand that being gay is just another way of being human. And that, in many ways, remains a radical concept in Japan even today. In the meantime, the bond between Mike and young Kana grows ever stronger, and yet he is going to have to return to Canada soon--a fact that fills them both with impending heartbreak.
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My Brother's Husband, Volume 1
Gengoroh Tagame
Yaichi is a work-at-home suburban dad in contemporary Tokyo; formerly married to Natsuki, father to their young daughter, Kana. Their lives suddenly change with the arrival at their doorstep of a hulking, affable Canadian named Mike Flanagan, who declares himself the widower of Yaichi's estranged gay twin, Ryoji. Mike is on a quest to explore Ryoji's past, and the family reluctantly but dutifully takes him in. What follows is an unprecedented and heartbreaking look at the state of a largely still-closeted Japanese gay culture: how it's been affected by the West, and how the next generation can change the preconceptions about it and prejudices against it.
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My Dad Used to Be so Cool
Keith Negly
A young boy tries to imagine his dad as the cool guy who once played in a band, rode a motorcycle, and got tattoos before he became a father.
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My Father's Arms are a Boat
Stein Erik Lunde
Unable to sleep, a young boy climbs into his father's arms and asks about birds, foxes, and whether his mother will ever awaken, then under a starry sky, the father provides clear answers and assurances.
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My Mother's Getting Married
Joan Drescher
Katy is not looking forward to the changes that her mother's marriage will bring.
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My Name Is Sangoel
Karen Williams and Khadra Mohammed
Sangoel is a refugee. Leaving behind his homeland of Sudan, where his father died in the war, he has little to call his own other than his name, a Dinka name handed down proudly from his father and grandfather before him.
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My Tiki Girl
Jennifer McMahon
Fifteen-year-old Maggie, still grieving the loss of her mother in an accident that also gave her a limp, has turned her back on old friends but connects with a new student, Dahlia, who makes her part of her quirky family and plans their future together as roving musicians and lovers.
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Newsgirl
Liza Ketchum
In the spring of 1851, San Francisco is booming. 12-year-old Amelia Forrester has just arrived with her family and they are eager to make a new life in Phoenix City. But the mostly male town is not that hospitable to females and Amelia decides she will earn more money as a boy. Cutting her hair and donning a cap, she joins a gang of newsboys, selling Eastern newspapers for a fortune.
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New Shoes
Susan Lynn Meyer
Set in the South during the time of segregation, this lushly illustrated picture book brings the civil rights era to life for contemporary readers as two young girls find an inventive way to foil Jim Crow laws.When her brother's hand-me-down shoes don't fit, it is time for Ella Mae to get new ones. She is ecstatic, but when she and her mother arrive at Mr. Johnson's shoe store, her happiness quickly turns to dejection. Ella Mae is unable to try on the shoes because of her skin color. Determined to fight back, Ella Mae and her friend Charlotte work tirelessly to collect and restore old shoes, wiping, washing, and polishing them to perfection. The girls then have their very own shoe sale, giving the other African American members of their community a place to buy shoes where they can be treated fairly and "try on all the shoes they want."
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Night on Fire
Ronald Kidd
When thirteen-year-old Billie Sims learns that the Freedom Riders, a civil rights group protesting segregation on buses in the summer of 1961, will be traveling through Anniston, Alabama, she thinks change could be coming to her stubborn town. But what starts as angry grumbles soon turns to brutality, and Billie is forced to reconsider her own views.
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Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story
Nora Raleigh Baskin
The morning of September 11, 2001, was warm, clear and perfect. Until 8:46 a.m when a plane struck the World Trade Center. But that has not happened yet.`
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Noah Chases the Wind
Michelle Worthington
Noah is different. He sees, hears, feels, and thinks in ways that other people don't always understand, and he asks a lot of questions along the way. Noah loves science, especially the weather. His books usually provide him with the answers he needs, until one day, there's one question they don't answer—and that is where Noah's windy adventure begins.
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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.
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No Small Thing
Natale Ghent
Then twelve-year-old Nathaniel and his two sisters, Cid and Queenie, discover an ad for a free pony in the paper, they can hardly believe their luck. The pony is theirs, as long as they can afford to take care of it. But what will their mother say? Nat knows things are hard for his mom; his dad walked out on them four years ago. But having a pony would help Nat and Cid stop bickering and it would mean so much to Queenie. When Nat's mother lets them keep it, life is still not easy, but at the end of each day, Nat knows his pony is waiting from him. Until a fire destroys the barn.
