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:
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Lies We Tell Ourselves
Robin Talley
In 1959 Virginia, Sarah, a black student who is one of the first to attend a newly integrated school, forces Linda, a white integration opponent's daughter, to confront harsh truths when they work together on a school project.
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Life Happens Next
Terry Trueman
Shawn's got a new perspective on life. But no one has a clue. That's because they can see only his wheelchair, his limp body, his drool. What they don't see? His brain, with perfect auditory memory. And his heart, which is in love with a girl. And his fierce belief that someday someone will realize there's way more to him than his appearance.
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Lighter Than My Shadow
Katie Green
A graphic memoir of eating disorders, abuse, and recovery. Lighter Than My Shadow is a hand-drawn story of struggle and recovery, a trip into the black heart of a taboo illness; an exposure of those who are so weak as to prey on the weak, and an inspiration to anybody who believes in the human power toendure towards happiness.
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Lights for Gita
Rachna Gilmore
Gita's family has only recently emigrated from India. Although she misses her relatives and friends, she has already made some friends in her new home. Today, she is looking forward to her favorite holiday: Divali, a festival of lights with fireworks, laughter, and exchanges of sweets. But Gita's plans soon fall apart and she becomes homesick and sad.
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Like Jake and Me
Mavis Jukes
In this Newbery Honor—winning story from 1984, a new family builds a relationship as a stepfather and stepson celebrate their differences and take heart in their similarities.
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Like Magic
Elaine Vickers
For three ten-year-old girls, their once simple worlds are starting to feel too big. Painfully shy Grace dreads starting fifth grade now that her best friend has moved away. Jada hopes she'll stop feeling so alone if she finds the mother who left years ago. And Malia fears the arrival of her new baby sister will forever change the family she loves. When the girls each find a mysterious treasure box in their library and begin to fill the box with their own precious things, they start to feel less alone. But it's up to Grace, Jada, and Malia to take the treasures and turn them into something more: true friendship.
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Like No Other
Una LaMarche
Devorah and Jaxon are stuck in an elevator, where fate leaves them no choice but to make an otherwise forbidden connection. She has never broken the rules of her strict Hasidic upbringing. He is a fun loving nerd who has never had much luck with girls. Though their families would never approve, the teens arrange secret meetings and risk everything.
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Like Water
Rebecca Podos
When her father is diagnosed with Hungtington's disease, eighteen-year-old Vanni abandons her plan to flee her small New Mexico hometown after high school graduation and instead spends the summer keeping herself busy with part-time jobs and boys, but that changes after she meets Leigh, whose friendship dares Vanni to ask herself big questions and make new plans.
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Liliana's Grandmothers
Leyla Torres
Because one of her grandmothers lives down the street and the other in a far away country, Liliana experiences two very different ways of life when she visits them.
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Lily and Dunkin
Donna Gephart
Lily Jo McGrother, born Timothy McGrother, is a girl. But being a girl is not so easy when you look like a boy. Especially when you’re in the eighth grade. Dunkin Dorfman, birth name Norbert Dorfman, is dealing with bipolar disorder and has just moved from the New Jersey town he’s called home for the past thirteen years. This would be hard enough, but the fact that he is also hiding from a painful secret makes it even worse. One summer morning, Lily Jo McGrother meets Dunkin Dorfman, and their lives forever change.
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Listen, Slowly
Thanha Lai
A California girl born and raised, Mai can't wait to spend her vacation at the beach. Instead, though, she has to travel to Vietnam with her grandmother, who is going back to find out what really happened to her husband during the Vietnam War. Mai's parents think this trip will be a great opportunity for their out-of-touch daughter to learn more about her culture. But to Mai, those are their roots, not her own. Vietnam is hot, smelly, and the last place she wants to be. Besides barely speaking the language, she doesn't know the geography, the local customs, or even her distant relatives. To survive her trip, Mai must find a balance between her two completely different worlds.
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Little Chicago
Adam Rapp
Little Chicago opens in the office of Children's Services, where eleven-year-old Blacky Brown is being interviewed by a social worker who is trying to determine what has happened to him. At first, Blacky's emotions are blocked, but then he reveals that he has been sexually abused by his mother's boyfriend, and is released into his mother's custody. Thus begins an alternately harrowing and hopeful story of a brave boy's attempts to come to grips with a grim reality. Mary Jane, a classmate who is similarly ostracized, tries to help Blackie, but he soon takes refuge instead in the gun that he buys.
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Little Chick and Mommy Cat
Marta Zafrilla
A tale that explores themes of diversity, adoption, and alternative family life follows a little chick who shares a happy relationship with his loving mother, a cat with soft fur, tickling whiskers, and a long beautiful tail.
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Little Cub
Olivier Dunrea
A young bear cub, who is alone in the world, and Old Bear, who is grumpy and tired of living alone, meet and discover what they have been missing.
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Little & Lion
Brandy Colbert
Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her [stepbrother] Lionel fall in love with the same girl, pushing Lionel's bipolar disorder to spin out of control and forcing Suzette to confront her own demons.
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Little Miss Spider
David Kirk
On her very first day of life, Little Miss Spider searches for her mother and finds love in an unexpected place.
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Little Treasure
Anat Georgy
Little Treasure celebrates love, life, and choice: Natalie sets off on a journey to find a special treasure, with the help of nice people, she finds this treasure inside of her; a little baby, born with the help of a donor. This book will help single parents by choice tell their children how they came into the world in this special way. Sweet illustrations peppered with a healthy dose of humor and lots of love.
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Lives Turned Upside Down: Homeless Children in Their Own Words and Photographs
Jim Hubbard
Two girls and two boys, ages nine to twelve, talk about their own personal experiences with homelessness and life in shelters.
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Living in Secret
Cristina Salat
Amelia's mother helps her run away from her father who has custody and establish a new home and identity in San Francisco with her mother's girlfriend.
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Living Violet (The Cambion Chronicles, #1)
Jaime Reed
Samara is intrigued by her flirtatious co-worker, Caleb, but his secrets draw Samara into a world that places her loved ones in danger, forcing her to take a risk that will change her life forever.
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Living with Mom and Living with Dad
Melanie Walsh
Her parents don't live together anymore, so sometimes the child in this book lives with her mom and cat, and sometimes with Dad. Her bedroom looks a little different in each house, and she keeps some toys in one place and some in another. But her favorite toys she takes with her wherever she goes.
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Lizard Radio
Pat Pat Schmatz
Fifteen-year-old bender Kivali, who was deposited on Earth as an infant by mysterious saurians, must discover her true identity in a futuristic society run by an all-powerful government.
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Locomotion
Jacqueline Woodson
In a series of poems, eleven-year-old Lonnie writes about his life, after the death of his parents, separated from his younger sister, living in a foster home, and finding his poetic voice at school.
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Lola and the Boy Next Door
Stephanie Perkins
Budding costume designer Lola lives an extraordinary life in San Francisco with her two dads and beloved dog, dating a punk rocker, but when the Bell twins return to the house next door Lola recalls both the friendship-ending fight with Calliope, a figure skater, and the childhood crush she had on Cricket.
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Long Way Down
Jason Reynolds
In Long Way Down, a young boy's brother has just died from a gunshot wound and through brief, powerful poems the reader gets the story of the brothers, the story of urban families, the story of a neighborhood, and the story of the impulse for revenge and the strength it takes to resist that. Terrifically powerful and searingly sad, this is Jason Reynolds continuing to explore some deep truths for young people.