DIVerse Families is a comprehensive bibliography that demonstrates the growing diversity of families in the United States. This type of bibliography provides teachers, librarians, counselors, adoption agencies, children/young adults, and especially parents and grandparents needing to empower their children with materials that reflect their families.
Browse DIVerse Families by Subject:
Supported by a Carnegie-Whitney Grant from the American Library Association and UCF grant sources.
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Adoption and Foster Care
Kathlyn Gay
Describes how these placement systems work and reveals the feelings of young people who find homes through adoption and foster care.
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Adoption is for Always
Linda Walvoord and Judith Friedman
Although Celia reacts to having been adopted with anger and insecurity, her parents help her accept her feelings and celebrate their love for her by making her adoption day a family holiday. Includes factual information about the adoption process.
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Adoption Stories for Young Children
Randall B. Hicks
Explaining in very simple terms why some parents cannot care for their children, and would choose to place them for adoption, this helpful collection of case studies also shows photographs of real adoptive parents who cannot bear children of their own, and introduces the idea that adults have often been adopted, too.
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A + E 4ever
Ilike Merey
Asher Machnik is a teenage boy cursed with a beautiful androgynous face. Guys punch him, girls slag him and by high school he's developed an intense fear of being touched. Art remains his only escape. Eulalie Mason is the lonely, tough-talking dyke from school who befriends Ash, a fellow artist and a best friend...a + e 4EVER is a graphic novel set in that ambiguous crossroads where love and friendship, boy and girl, straight and gay meet. It goes where few books have ventured, into gender/queer life, where affections aren't black and white.
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A Family for Jamie: An Adoption Story
Suzanne Bloom
Although Dan and Molly can make cookies and birdhouses, they cannot make a baby, so they adopt Jamie and share with him their life and love.
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A Family is a Family is a Family
Sara O'Leary
When a teacher asks the children in her class to think about what makes their families special, the answers are all different in many ways -- but the same in the one way that matters most of all. One child is worried that her family is just too different to explain, but listens as her classmates talk about what makes their families special. One is raised by a grandmother, and another has two dads. One is full of stepsiblings, and another has a new baby.
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A Father Like That
Charlotte Zolotow
A young boy shares with his mother his daydreams about the father who left before he was born.
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A Fire Engine for Ruthie
Lesléa Newman
Ruthie's Nana suggests playing tea party and fashion show during their visit, but Ruthie is much more interested in the vehicles that a neighbor boy is playing with as they pass his house each day.
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A Forever Family
Roslyn Banish and Jennifer Jordan-Wong
Eight-year-old Jennifer Jordan-Wong describes her adoption by a family after four years of living as a foster child with many different families.
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A Friendship for Today
Patrick C. McKissack
In 1954, when desegregation comes to Kirkland, Missouri, ten-year-old Rosemary faces many changes and challenges at school and at home as her parents separate.
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After Tupac & D Foster
Jacqueline Woodson
In the New York City borough of Queens in 1996, three girls bond over their shared love of Tupac Shakur's music, as together they try to make sense of the unpredictable world in which they live.
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Afterworlds
Scott Westerfeld
Darcy Patel has put college on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. With a contract in hand, she arrives in New York City with no apartment, no friends, and all the wrong clothes. But lucky for Darcy, she’s taken under the wings of other seasoned and fledgling writers who help her navigate the city and the world of writing and publishing. Over the course of a year, Darcy finishes her book, faces critique, and falls in love.
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A Handful of Stars
Cynthia Lord
When her blind dog slips his collar, twelve-year old Lily meets Salma Santiago, a young Hispanic girl whose migrant family are in Maine for the blueberry-picking season, and, based partly on their mutual love of dogs, the two forge a friendship while painting bee boxes for Lily's grandfather--but as the Blueberry Queen pageant approaches Lily and Selma are confronted with some of the hard truths of prejudice and migrant life.
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A House Between Home: Youth in the Foster Care System
Joyce Libal
Discusses the laws that govern the foster care system, the newest and most innovative programs available today and provides an overview of the history of foster care, including the orphan trains and the British home children.
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A is for Activist
Innosanto Nagara
A is for Activist is an ABC board book written and illustrated for the next generation of progressives: families who want their kids to grow up in a space that is unapologetic about activism, environmental justice, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and everything else that activists believe in and fight for. The alliteration, rhyming, and vibrant illustrations make the book exciting for children, while the issues it brings up resonate with their parents' values of community, equality, and justice.
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Aitor Has Two Moms (Aitor Tiene Dos Mamas)
María José Mendieta
Aitor has always wondered why he has two mothers, but it isn't until his best friend Imanol's parents forbid him from attending Aitor's ninth birthday party that Aitor sees how some in his small town see his family situation.
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A Koala for Katie: An Adoption Story
Jonathan London
On a trip to the zoo, Katie gets a special present that helps her realize how much her adoptive parents love her.
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Alan Cole is Not a Coward
Eric Bell
Hoping to keep his older brother Nathan silent about his secret crush on another boy at their school, twelve-year-old Alan agrees to a ruthless sibling competition involving nearly impossible tasks--from standing up to their demanding father to getting a first kiss.
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Alex As Well
Alyssa Brugman
Alex has turned vegetarian, changed schools, stopped taking her medications, and created a new identity. An identity that shakes her world. And Alex - the other Alex - has a lot to say about it.
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A List of Cages
Robin Roe
When Adam Blake lands the best elective ever in his senior year, serving as an aide to the school psychologist, he thinks he's got it made. Sure, it means a lot of sitting around, which isn't easy for a guy with ADHD, but he can't complain, since he gets to spend the period texting all his friends. Then the doctor asks him to track down the troubled freshman who keeps dodging her, and Adam discovers that the boy is Julian; the foster brother he hasn't seen in five years.
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A Little Friendly Advice
Siobhan Vivian
Ruby is on the verge of turning sixteen. Her friends have been planning her party for weeks. They all have gathered at her house for a pre-party. Her mom has made her favorite dinner - ziti. All is perfect, down to the vintage Polaroid camera her mother has given her. Then it turns horribly wrong. With the ring of the doorbell, her father, who has been gone for years, has come back into her life.
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All About Adoption: How Families are Made & How Kids Feel About It
Marc. A. Nemiroff and Jane Annunziata
Using simple language, describes the stages of the adoption process and discusses complex feelings commonly felt by adopted children.
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All About Adoption: How to Deal with the Questions of Your Past
Anne Lanchon
Part of the "Sunscreen" series, this book uses personal testimonial advice to help kids understand the questions about their own lives. It also discusses issues for kids who are of a different ethnic background than their adoptive parents, and includes kids who don't want to find out about their birth parentage.
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All American Boys
Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
Sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing. Classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who's the older brother of his best friend.
