Diverse Families

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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Adaptation

Malinda Lo

Flocks of birds are hurling themselves at aeroplanes across America. Thousands of people die. On Reese's long drive home, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won't tell them what happened. For Reese, though, this is just the start. She can't remember anything from the time between her accident and the day she woke up almost a month later. She only knows one thing: she's different now. Torn between longtime crush David and new girl Amber, the real question is: who can she trust?
A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo

Marlon Bundo

HBO's Emmy-winning Last Week Tonight with John Oliver presents a children's picture book about a Very Special boy bunny who falls in love with another boy bunny. Meet Marlon Bundo, a lonely bunny who lives with his Grampa, Mike Pence - the Vice President of the United States. But on this Very Special Day, Marlon's life is about to change forever... With its message of tolerance and advocacy, this charming bunny book for kids explores issues of same sex marriage and democracy. Sweet, funny, and beautifully illustrated, this better Bundo book is dedicated to every bunny who has ever felt different.
A Day's Work

Eve Bunting

When Francisco, a young Mexican American boy, tries to help his grandfather find work, he discovers that even though the old man cannot speak English, he has something even more valuable to teach Francisco.
ADH-Me!

John Hutton

As far back as I can recall (starting when I was very small) I’ve daydreamed, gazing into space, climbed and jumped all over the place...” Written by a pediatrician and health literacy expert, ADH-Me! is an empathetic journey from the perspective of a child learning to live and succeed with ADHD. An accessible, rhyming narrative and inviting illustrations help families know what to expect from diagnosis through stages of treatment, while reminding all readers that love and support are the surest means to a happy ending.
A Different Home: A New Foster Child's Story

John DeGarmo and Kelly DeGarmo

When Jessie is placed in foster care, she finds it difficult at first but slowly begins to like her new home. First person recount. Story is designed to help children aged 4-10 to settle into care. Includes notes for foster parents.
A Different Pond

Bao Phi

As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. Between hope-filled casts, Bao's father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam.
Adopted like Me: My Book of Adopted Heroes

Ann Angel

Adopted Like Me is a children's picture book that tells the stories of famous and inspirational people, all of whom were adopted. Read about great musicians like Bo Diddley, politicians like Nelson Mandela, stars like Marilyn Monroe as well as inventors, athletes, a princess skilled in judo and fencing, and many more.
Adopted: The Ultimate Teen Guide

Suzanne Slade

Provides a resource for adopted teens who struggle with questions of identity, the search for and meeting with birth parents, and adoption by those of a different race or country, and offers advice and anecdotes from adopted teens.
Adoption

Laurie Willis

Collection of eleven essays pertaining to the topic of adoption, covering open adoption, transracial adoptions, challenging same-sex couples the right to adopt, and other related topics.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Father Like That

Charlotte Zolotow

A young boy shares with his mother his daydreams about the father who left before he was born.
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.
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.
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.
After Ever After

Jordan Sonnenblick

Although Jeff and Tad, encouraged by a new friend, Lindsey, make a deal to help one another overcome aftereffects of their cancer treatments in preparation for eighth-grade graduation, Jeff still craves advice from his older brother Stephen, who is studying drums in Africa.
After the Fall

Kate Hart

Told from two viewpoints, seventeen-year-old Raychel relies on the support of her overachieving best friend Matt while secretly sleeping with his brother Andrew, and Matt tries to play hero and hide how much he loves her.
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.
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.
A Gift from Abuela

Cecilia Ruiz

The first time Abuela held Niña, her heart overflowed with tenderness. And as Niña grows up, she and Abuela have a lot of fun doing simple things. Abuela decides that she wants to buy Niña a special treat, so she saves a little bit of her money every week. But then something terrible happens, and Abuela's dream of a surprise for Niña seems impossible. Luckily, the time they spend together and the love they have for each other are the best gifts of all.
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.