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 Diverse Families by Subject:
-
Bingo Love
Tee Franklin
When Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray met at church bingo in 1963, it was love at first sight. Forced apart by their families and society, Hazel and Mari both married young men and had families. Decades later, now in their mid-'60s, Hazel and Mari reunite again at a church bingo hall. Realizing their love for each other is still alive, what these grandmothers do next takes absolute strength and courage.
-
Bi-Normal
M. G. Higgins
High school social dynamics and issues of sexual identity combine in this compact yet thoughtful entry in the Gravel Road series. Brett Miller is a high school sophomore who knows exactly who he is. He is the boyfriend of the fantastically hot Jillia. He is popular. He is normal and 100 percent not gay. Then he meets Zach in art class. Brett's attraction is undeniable and suddenly he doesn't know who he is anymore. The first person point of view enables the reader to empathize with Brett's confusion as he struggles to come to terms with his bisexuality.
-
Bird
Zetta Elliott
Young Mekhai, better known as Bird, loves to draw. With drawings, he can erase the things that don't turn out right. In real life, problems aren’t so easily fixed. As Bird struggles to understand the death of his beloved grandfather and his older brother’s drug addiction, he escapes into his art. Drawing is an outlet for Bird’s emotions and imagination, and provides a path to making sense of his world. In time, with the help of his grandfather’s friend, Bird finds his own special somethin’ and wings to fly. Told with spare grace, Bird is a touching look at a young boy coping with real-life troubles. Readers will be heartened by Bird’s quiet resilience, and moved by the healing power of putting pencil to paper.
-
Bird Lake Moon
Kevin Henkes
Twelve-year-old Mitch and his mother are spending the summer with his grandparents at Bird Lake after his parents separate, and ten-year-old Spencer and his family have returned to the lake where Spencer's little brother drowned long ago, and as the boys become friends and spend time together, each of them begins to heal.
-
Bitter Rose: Color Me Crushed
Melody Carlson
A Mexican-American high school senior deals with the separation and divorce of her parents and their effects on her relationship with them and with God.
-
Blabber Mouth
Morris Gleitzman
Rowena Batts is hiding in a cupboard after having stuffed a frog into Darryn Peck's mouth. But she has a bigger problem that involves her dad, his shirts, and his habit of singing in public. How can she tell him these things are wrecking her life?
-
Black and White
Eric Walters
Thomas meets Denyse after he watches her amazing skills at basketball. As the two become friends, they endure name-calling, cruel glances, and hurtful comments because of the difference of their skin.
-
Blackberry Stew
Isabell Monk
When her Grandpa Jack dies, Hope remembers the time she went with him to pick blackberries, and she realizes that he will continue to live in her and in her memories.
-
Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America
Ibi Zoboi
Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi and featuring some of the most acclaimed best-selling black authors writing for teens today - Black Enough is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it's like to be young and black in America.
-
Black is Brown is Tan
Arnold Adoff
Describes in verse a family with a brown-skinned mother, white-skinned father, two children, and their various relatives.
-
Black Like Me
John Howard Griffin
The Deep South of the late 1950's was another country: a land of lynchings, segregated lunch counters, whites-only restrooms, and a color line etched in blood across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. White journalist John Howard Griffin, working for the black-owned magazine Sepia, decided to cross that line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man.
-
Black Means…
Barney Grossman
Records the feelings of New York elementary school children toward the word "black."
-
Blackout
John Rocco
When a busy family's activities come to a halt because of a blackout, they find they enjoy spending time together and not being too busy for once.
-
Black, White and Tan
Nicole C. Mullen
Nicole C. Mullen’s book reminds children “Together we are beautiful!” God loves all the kids in his family―no matter what color they are.
-
Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self
Rebecca Walker
In a memoir about the power of race to share one's personal identity, the daughter of Jewish father and African-American mother recalls her confusing but ultimately rewarding life lived between two conflicting ethnic identities. When Mel Leventhal married Alice Walker during the civil rights movement in the late 1960s, his mother declared him dead and did not reconcile until after the birth of her first grandchild.
-
Black, White, Just Right!
Marguerite W. Davol
A girl explains how her parents differ in color, tastes in art and food, and pet preferences, and how she herself is different too but just right.
-
Blended
Sharon M. Draper
Piano-prodigy Isabella, eleven, whose black father and white mother struggle to share custody, never feels whole, especially as racial tensions affect her school, her parents both become engaged, and she and her stepbrother are stopped by police.
-
Blood Family
Anne Fine
A boy with an abusive father grows up and fears that he has the same potential for violence as his father has.
-
Bloodline
Joe Jimenez
Seventeen-year-old Abraham is in love, but his girlfriend and the grandmother who raised him are worried about his fighting, and things only get worse when his uncle introduces him to boxing.
-
Blood Water Paint
Joy McCullough
In Renaissance Italy, Artemisia Gentileschi endures the subjugation of women that allows her father to take credit for her extraordinary paintings, rape and the ensuing trial, and torture, buoyed by her deceased mother's stories of strong women of the Bible.
-
Blue Boy
Rakesh Satyal
Satyal's lovely coming-of-age debut charts an Indian-American boy's transformation from mere mortal to Krishnaji, the blue-skinned Hindu deity. Twelve-year-old Kiran Sharma's a bit of an outcast: he likes ballet and playing with his mother's makeup. He also reveres his Indian heritage and convinces himself that the reason he's having trouble fitting in is because he's actually the 10th reincarnation of Krishnaji. He plans to come out to the world at the 1992 Martin Van Buren Elementary School talent show, and much of the book revels in his comical preparations as he creates his costume, plays the flute and practices his dance moves to a Whitney Houston song. But as the performance approaches, something strange happens: Kiran's skin begins to turn blue. Satyal writes with a graceful ease, finding new humor in common awkward pre-teen moments and giving readers a delightful and lively young protagonist.
-
Blue is the Warmest Color
Julie Maroh
Blue is the Warmest Color is a graphic novel about growing up, falling in love, and coming out. Clementine, a high school student, has an average life: she has friends, family, and the romantic attention of the boys in her school. When her openly gay best friend takes her out on the town, she wanders into a lesbian bar where she encounters Emma: a punkish, confident girl with blue hair. Their attraction is instant and electric, and Clementine finds herself in a relationship that will test her friends, parents, and her own ideas about herself and her identity.
-
Bo at Ballard Creek
Kirkpatrick Hill
It's the 1920s, and Bo was headed for an Alaska orphanage when she won the hearts of two tough gold miners who set out to raise her, enthusiastically helped by all the kind people of the nearby Eskimo village.
-
Boats for Papa
Jessixa Bagley
Buckley and his Mama live in a cozy cabin by the ocean. He loves to carve boats out of the driftwood he finds on the beach nearby. He makes: big boats long boats short boats and tall boats, each one more beautiful than the last, and sends them out to sea. If they don't come back, he knows they've found their way to his papa, whom he misses very much.
-
Bobby the Brave (Sometimes)
Lisa Yee
Fourth-grader Bobby is hurt when he hears his father, a former professional football player, say that the two of them are nothing alike, but finally summons the courage to talk about it after he suffers a public asthma attack.