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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Honor Among Thieves

Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre

A savvy young criminal with antisocial behavior is recruited to attend the Honors space program and joins a team on a sentient spaceship destined for the far reaches of the galaxy only to discover dangerous secrets hidden among the stars.
Honor Girl

Maggie Thrash

Maggie Thrash has spent basically every summer of her fifteen-year-old life at the one-hundred-year-old Camp Bellflower for Girls, set deep in the heart of Appalachia. She’s from Atlanta, she’s never kissed a guy, she’s into Backstreet Boys in a really deep way, and her long summer days are full of a pleasant, peaceful nothing . . . until one confounding moment. A split-second of innocent physical contact pulls Maggie into a gut-twisting love for an older, wiser, and most surprising of all (at least to Maggie), female counselor named Erin. But Camp Bellflower is an impossible place for a girl to fall in love with another girl, and Maggie’s savant-like proficiency at the camp’s rifle range is the only thing keeping her heart from exploding. When it seems as if Erin maybe feels the same way about Maggie, it’s too much for both Maggie and Camp Bellflower to handle, let alone to understand.
Hoods

Angela Betzien

Each night two hoods ride a train to a wrecking yard on the outskirts of the city. Here, in this cemetery of stories, they are storytellers with the power to fast forward, pause and rewind. Tonight, they tell the story of three kids left in a car. Rewind. It’s Friday, KFC night and the last day of school before Christmas. Kyle, Jessie and baby brother Troy are waiting in the car for their mum. As night approaches the car park takes on a dark and sinister aspect filled with strange and familiar characters. The shopping centre closes, Mum still hasn’t returned and the baby won’t stop crying. Exploring issues of poverty and family violence, Hoods is a suburban tale of survival and solidarity against the odds.
Hooper

Geoff Herbach

For Adam Reed, basketball is a passport. Adam’s basketball skills have taken him from an orphanage in Poland to a loving adoptive mother in Minnesota. When he’s tapped to play on a select AAU team along with some of the best players in the state, it just confirms that basketball is his ticket to the good life: to new friendships, to the girl of his dreams, to a better future. But life is more complicated off the court. When an incident with the police threatens to break apart the bonds Adam’s finally formed after a lifetime of struggle, he must make an impossible choice between his new family and the sport that’s given him everything.
Hope

Isabell Monk

During a visit with her great-aunt, a young girl learns the story behind her name and learns to feel proud of her biracial heritage.
Hope and Will Have a Baby: The Gift of Embryo Donation

Irene Celcer

Hope and Will fall in love, get married, and try very hard to have a baby before their doctor tells them that they need a special loving couple to donate an embryo which the doctor would place in Hope's uterus.
Hope and Will Have a Baby: The Gift of Surrogacy

Irene Celcer

Hope and Will fall in love, get married, and try very hard to have a baby before their doctor tells them that they need a surrogate mother to carry their baby in her uterus.
Horace

Holly Keller

Horace, an adopted child, realizes that being part of a family depends on how you feel and not how you look.
Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet

Sheri L. Smith

Disaster strikes when Ana Shen is about to deliver the salutatorian speech at her junior high school graduation, but an even greater crisis looms when her best friend invites a crowd to Ana's house for dinner, and Ana's multicultural grandparents must find a way to share a kitchen.
House of Robots: Robot Revolution (House of Robots Series Book 3)

James Patterson

Robots on strike! Sammy's underappreciated mechanical helpers are causing chaos in book 3 of the bestselling House of Robots series
How are We the Same and Different?

Bobbie Kalman

We are the same because we are all human beings. We are also the same because we are all different. We have thoughts, ideas, beliefs, talents, and dreams, but how we think and act makes us who we are. This book encourages children to honor their own uniqueness and that of others through new ideas and positive actions.
How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity

Michael Cart

Presents twelve stories by contemporary, award-winning young adult authors, some presented in graphic or letter format, which explore themes of gender identity, love, and sexuality.
How I Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive

Janet Taylor Lisle

A young writer's fantasy world becomes dangerously entangled with reality. Eleven-year-old Archie and his six-year-old brother, Oggie, are constantly going back and forth between their mother's home and the apartment that their father shares with his girlfriend. To distract Oggie from the turbulence of endlessly bouncing from "Saturn" to "Jupiter" and back again, Archie invents a fantastic story about the Mysterious Mole People. When Oggie's wallet is stolen by kids from a local gang, Archie tries to retrieve it and becomes increasingly ensnared in the gang's dangerous activities. Even worse, he soon finds that his fictitious mole story is merging with the darkness of real life in a very frightening way.
How I Learn: A Kids Guide to Learning Disability

Brenda S. Miles and Colleen A. Patterson

How I Learn introduces the concept of a learning disability in concrete terms for younger students. This supportive and upbeat story reassures readers that they are capable, and can use 'smart strategies' to help themselves learn. And that's better than OK. That's GREAT! A note to parents, caregivers, and professionals is included, with suggestions to guide discussion and help children identify their particular strengths and challenges.
How I Learned English: The Story of a Brave Mexican Girl

Paula Massadas Pereira

How I Learned English describes the journey of Claudia Sanchez, a young woman who immigrates to the United States. It is a pedagogical picture book that aims to inspire English learners to become proficient in their new language. It was written in basic English to ensure reading comprehension. Study questions are available to encourage discussion. Major topics: ESL, immigration, study skills, culture shock, and cultural values.
How I Learned Geography

Uri Shulevitz

As he spends hours studying his father's world map, a young boy escapes the hunger and misery of refugee life. Based on the author's childhood in Kazakhstan, where he lived as a Polish refugee during World War II.
How I Saved My Father's Life (And Ruined Everything Else)

Ann Hood

After her father leaves and marries the glamorous Ava Pomme, Madeline blames her mother for their difficult new life, but in spite of the twelve-year-old's efforts to achieve sainthood, it takes a summer trip to Italy to put her family into perspective.
How It Feels to Float

Helen Fox

A gutting, profound, deeply hopeful portrayal of living with mental illness and grief, this modern-day Bell Jar marks the arrival of an exceptional new talent in the YA space. Biz knows how to float. She has her people, her posse, her mom and the twins. She has Grace. And she has her dad, who tells her about the little kid she was, who loves her so hard, and who shouldn't be here but is. So Biz doesn't tell anyone anything. Not about her dark, runaway thoughts, not about kissing Grace or noticing Jasper, the new boy. And she doesn't tell anyone about her dad. Because her dad died when she was six. And Biz knows how to float, right there on the surface--normal okay regular fine. But after what happens on the beach--first in the ocean, and then in the sand--the tethers that hold Biz steady come undone. Dad disappears, and with him, all comfort. It might be easier, better, sweeter to float all the way away? Or maybe stay a little longer, find her father, bring him back to her. Or maybe--maybe maybe maybe--there's a third way Biz just can't see yet. In this mesmerizing, radiant debut, Helena Fox tells a story about love and grief and family and friendship, about inter-generational mental illness, and how living with it is both a bridge to someone loved and lost and also a chasm. She explores the hard, bewildering, and beautiful places loss can take us, and honors those who hold us tightly when the current wants to tug us out to sea.
How It Feels To Have A Gay Or Lesbian Parent: A Book By Kids For Kids Of All Ages

Judith Snow

Children, adolescents, and young adults here talk openly and candidly about how and when they learned of their parent's sexual orientation and the effect it had on them and their families, covering themes of prejudice, harassment, conflict and confusion, as well as hope for tolerance and family harmony.
How it Feels to Live with a Physical Disability

Jill Krementz

Reveals, through photographs and interviews, the indomitable spirit and strength of children living with such physical disabilities as blindness, cerebral palsy, paralysis, and missing limbs.
How I Was Adopted: Samantha's Story

Joanna Cole

A young girl tells the story of how she came to be her parents' child through adoption.
How My Family Came to Be: Daddy, Papa and Me

Andrew Aldrich

Examines how to be a family when adopted by a gay couple.
How My Parents Learned to Eat

Ina R. Friedman

An American sailor courts a Japanese girl and each tries, in secret, to learn the other's way of eating.
How (Not) to Ask a Boy to Prom

S.J. Goslee

When his older sister encourages him to ask someone to the prom, things do not go as planned and Nolan ends up fake dating a guy who used to bully him.
How Tia Lola Learned to Teach

Julia Alvarez

Juanita and Miguel's great aunt, Tia Lola, comes from the Dominican Republic to help take care of them after their parents divorce, and soon she is so involved in their small Vermont community that when her visa expires, the whole town turns out to support her.