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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Nora & Kettle (Paper Starts #1)
Lauren Nicolle Taylor
Set in 1953, Nora & Kettle explores the collision of two teenagers facing extraordinary adversity. Kettle, an orphaned Japanese American, is struggling to make a life in the aftermath of an event in history not often referred to--the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the removal of children from orphanages for having "one drop of Japanese blood in them." Nora, the daughter of a civil rights lawyer who is building a compensation case for the interned Japanese Americans, is barely surviving her violent home and dreams of a life outside of the brownstone walls. Their meeting is inevitable, devastating and ultimately healing.
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Nora's Ark
Natalie Kinsey-Warnock
This heartwarming story by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock is based on a real-life event: the Vermont Flood of 1927. Watercolors by Caldecott Medal-winning artist Emily Arnold McCully capture both the sweeping drama of the flood and the comfort of a cozy kitchen filled with friends, neighbors, and good cheer.
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Nora's Chicks
Patricia Maclachlan
Nora and her family have just arrived from Russia and are making a new home on the American frontier. The prairie is very different from the forested hills Nora is used to. Most of all, it’s lonely. Papa has the cows he sings to as he milks them. Baby brother Milo has a dog to follow him wherever he goes. But Nora has no one and nothing to call her own until Papa brings home a dozen chicks and two geese. Nora names each one, and they follow her everywhere — even to church! But what will happen when one of her beloved chicks goes missing?
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No Small Thing
Natale Ghent
Then twelve-year-old Nathaniel and his two sisters, Cid and Queenie, discover an ad for a free pony in the paper, they can hardly believe their luck. The pony is theirs, as long as they can afford to take care of it. But what will their mother say? Nat knows things are hard for his mom; his dad walked out on them four years ago. But having a pony would help Nat and Cid stop bickering and it would mean so much to Queenie. When Nat's mother lets them keep it, life is still not easy, but at the end of each day, Nat knows his pony is waiting from him. Until a fire destroys the barn.
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Not All Princesses Dress in Pink
Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple
Rhyming text affirms that girls can pursue their many interests, from playing sports to planting flowers in the dirt, without giving up their tiaras.
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Notes from the Blender
Trish Cook and Brendan Halpin
Two teenagers -- a heavy-metal-music-loving boy who is still mourning the death of his mother years earlier, and a beautiful, popular girl whose parents divorced because her father is gay -- try to negotiate the complications of family and peer relationships as they get to know each other after learning that their father and mother are marrying each other.
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Notes on a Near-Life Experience
Olivia Birdsall
Mia never thought she'd be the child of a broken home. Yet when she's 15 years old, one day her father just up and moves out. As her family life crumbles, her love life is finally coming together. Julian, her brother Allen's best friend and her longtime crush, has finally noticed her—and being with Julian makes her happier than she can put into words. Meanwhile, her mother has disappeared into work, her brother is skipping school and acting weird, and her father is cohabitating with a frighteningly sexy Peruvian woman named Paloma. Mia wishes the divorce would just go away so she could focus on Julian...but she can't ignore her problems forever. In this honest, witty, utterly accessible winner of the Delacorte Press Contest, first-time author Olivia Birdsall creates an authentic and lovable teenager in Mia.
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Not Even Bones
Rebecca Schaeffer
Nita's mother hunts monsters and, after Nita dissects and packages them, sells them online, but when Nita follows her conscience to help a live monster escape, she is sold on the black market in his place.
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Not Every Princess
Jeffery Bone and Lisa Bone
After listing activities that are stereotypically, but not always, attributed to princesses, fairies, pirates, superheroes, and more, encourages the reader to imagine what one could be, despite others' expectations. Includes note to parents.
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Nothing Happened
Molly Booth
Modern-day retelling of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing taking place at an idyllic summer camp where the counselors have to cope with simmering drama.
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Nothing Pink
Mark Hardy
Vincent Harris, the teenaged son of a Baptist minister, has always known he is gay and uses his faith to avoid any sinful thoughts or acts, but when his family moves to a new church in the late 1970s he meets Robert Ingle, falls in love, and begins to wonder if God is really asking him to repent and change.
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No Tildes on Tuesday
Cherrye S. Vasquez
Isabella never wanted to learn to speak Spanish. But when her parents announce that they are moving the family to a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood, Isabella becomes desperately afraid that she won't be able to fit in and grudgingly agrees to start Spanish lessons with her abuela. But the lessons aren't as easy as she thought they would be. Abuela is a strict teacher and the words are a lot more difficult to memorize than Isabella thought they would be, so at the goading of her best friend she decides to put a stop to them. Through a runaway adventure, a visit to her father in the hospital, and an introduction to a new kind of friend, Isabella comes to realize that Spanish may not be as bad as she thought, and that being able to communicate with people who share her heritage could be invaluable. Follow Isabella and author Cherrye Vasquez on a challenging journey of culture, family, and communication that just might change your mind about having No Tildes on Tuesday.
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Not My Idea
Anastasia Higginbotham
Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness is a a picture book that invites white children and parents to become curious about racism, accept that it's real, and cultivate justice.
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Not Otherwise Specified
Hannah Moskowitz
Auditioning for a New York City performing arts high school could help Etta escape from her Nebraska all-girl school, where she is not gay enough for her former friends, not sick enough for her eating disorders group, and not thin enough for ballet, but it may also mean real friendships.
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Not the Only One: Lesbian and Gay Fiction for Teens
Jane Summer
This revised edition of Alyson's groundbreaking anthology for gay and lesbian teens features new original fiction which reflect both the tension and relief of being true to oneself. These stories provide hope and inspiration to gay and lesbian teenagers as they take the first exciting, often difficult steps toward accepting their sexuality and emerging from the shadows as open and proud individuals.
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Noughts & Crosses (Noughts & Crosses #1)
Malorie Blackman
Sephy is a Cross - a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a nought - a 'colourless' member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses. The two have been friends since early childhood. But that's as far as it can go.
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No Way to Run
Janice Greene
A jewelry store robber discovers the amazing abilities of the disabled young woman who witnessed his crime.
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Now is Everything
Amy Giles
The McCauleys look perfect on the outside. But nothing is ever as it seems, and this family is hiding a dark secret. Hadley McCauley will do anything to keep her sister safe from their father. But when Hadley's forbidden relationship with Charlie Simmons deepens, the violence at home escalates, culminating in an explosive accident that will leave everyone changed. When Hadley attempts to take her own life at the hospital post-accident, her friends, doctors, family, and the investigator on the case want to know why. Only Hadley knows what really happened that day, and she's not talking.
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Now Playing: Stoner & Spaz II
Ronald Koertge
High schooler Ben Bancroft, a budding filmmaker with cerebral palsy, struggles to understand his relationship with drug-addict Colleen while he explores a new friendship with A.J., who shares his obsession with movies and makes a good impression on Ben's grandmother.
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Now That I'm Here
Aaron Meshon
A little boy describes what his parents' lives were like before he was born ... and how much more fun-filled they are now that he's here
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Nurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, A Civil War Hero
Marissa Moss
A story of a nineteen-year-old woman who disguised herself as a man to avoid an unwanted marriage and who distinguished herself as a male nurse during the Civil War, and later as a spy for the Union Army.
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Obama: A Promise of Change
David Mendell and Sarah L. Thomson
A journalist who has covered the senator and presidential candidate since his campaign for the Senate offers a portrait that features his childhood and youth in Hawaii and his embrace of seemingly ruthless campaign tactics.
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Obama: Only in America
Carole Weatherford
From birth to election as the first African-American president of the United States, this biography tells the story of Barack Obama through lyrical prose and primary-source quotes from his speeches throughout.
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October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard
Leslea Newman
On the night of October 6, 1998, twenty-one-year-old gay college student Matthew Shepard was lured from a Wyoming bar by two young men, savagely beaten, tied to a remote fence, and left to die. In a deeply personal response to that tragic day and its brutal aftermath, Leslea Newman explores the impact of the vicious crime through fictitious monologues from various points of view.
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Oddly Normal: One Family's Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms with His Sexuality
John Schwartz
A heartfelt memoir by the father of a gay teen, and an eye-opening guide for families who hope to bring up well-adjusted gay adults. Three years ago, John Schwartz, a national correspondent at The New York Times, got the call that every parent hopes never to receive: his thirteen-year-old son, Joe, was in the hospital following a suicide attempt. Mustering the courage to come out to his classmates, Joe's disclosure--delivered in a tirade about homophobic attitudes--was greeted with unease and confusion by his fellow students. Hours later, he took an overdose of pills. In the aftermath, John and his wife, Jeanne, determined to help Joe feel more comfortable in his own skin, launched a search for services and groups that could help Joe understand that he wasn't alone. This book is Schwartz's very personal attempt to address his family's struggles within a culture that is changing fast, but not fast enough to help gay kids like Joe.