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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Runaway!
Janet Willig
After leaving home because her drunken father frequently beats her, fourteen-year-old Jodie tries out a couple of foster homes and eventually finds peace with a loving Christian family.
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Runaways, Vol. 1: Find Your Way Home
Rainbow Rowell
When the Runaways eliminate the Pride from Los Angeles, it leaves a vacuum of power in the city's underworld, and soon Nico, Karolina, Gert, Chase, and Molly are on the run again to uncover the truth behind their parents' past before it catches up to them.
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Runaways, Vol. 2: Best Friends Forever
Rainbow Rowell
The Runaways are a family again! But a family needs a guardian, and the only Runaway who's got her life together is in middle school. And, even for a kid like Molly who likes her classes, that can be fraught with peril. Meanwhile, there's a new arrival as the gang welcomes Karolina's girlfriend - Julie Power of Power Pack! Having an experienced adventurer around will be useful when one of the universe's most fearsome villains invades the hostel! But do some of the Runaways have mixed feelings about Julie's arrival? As Molly contemplates a supernatural deal that must have a monkey's paw-esque downside, one of the team suff ers a fate worse than death. Really! And will the Runaways' greatest foe be...well-meaning outsiders who want to help them?!
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Runaway Twin
Peg Kehret
Thirteen-year-old Sunny, accompanied by a stray dog, takes advantage of a windfall to travel from her Nebraska foster home to Enumclaw, Washington, to find the twin sister from whom she was separated at age three.
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Run, Clarissa, Run
Rachel Eliason
Life in a small town can be tough when you're a little different, but for a fifteen year old transgender kid it can truly be hell. Clark is harassed daily at school for his effeminate behavior and appearance. He has no friends and a brother that is as likely to be on the teasing as to prevent it. When Clark is offered a job babysitting for the Pirella family, it seems like a godsend. The money is good. He bonds with the girls almost instantly. The father, Tony, works in computer security. Tony and Clark strike up a friendship based on a mutal love of computers and hacking. As Tony becomes aware of Clark's transsexuality and his growing feminine alter ego, Clarissa, things become incredibly complicated. Will Tony be Clarissa's salvation, or her undoing?
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Running on Empty
S. E. Durrant
After his grandfather dies, eleven-year-old JJ, a talented runner, assumes new responsibilities including taking care of his intellectually-challenged parents and figuring out how bills get paid.
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Ruth and the Green Book
Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Gwen Strauss
When Ruth and her parents take a motor trip from Chicago to Alabama to visit her grandma, they rely on a pamphlet called "The Negro Motorist Green Book" to find places that will serve them. Includes facts about "The Green Book."
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Ryan's Mom is Tall
Heather Jopling
Ryan's Mom and Mummy are different in many ways. See how their family puzzle fits together! This comparative book of opposites highlights the differences between Ryan's Mom and Mummy while using a puzzle motif to create a picture of families in the new millennium.
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Sacred Country
Rose Tremain
"I have a secret to tell you, dear, and this is it: I am not Mary. That is a mistake. I am not a girl. I'm a boy." Mary's fight to become Martin, her claustrophobic small town, and her troubled family make up the core of this remarkable and intimate, emotional yet unsentimental novel. As daring as Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Sacred Country inspires us to reconsider the essence of gender, and proposes new insights in the unraveling of that timeless malady known as the human condition. As Mary's mother, Estelle, observes, "There are no whole truths, just as there is no heart of the onion. There are only the dreams of the individual mind." Sweeping us through three decades, from the repressive English countryside of the fifties to the swinging London of the sixties to the rhinestone tackiness of seventies America, Rose Tremain unmasks the "sacred country" within us all.
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Saddle Sore
Bonnie Bryant
The girls of the Saddle Club have headed West to the Bar None Ranch. This time they've brought their friend, Emily, who has cerebral palsy. Emily is going to help the ranch's owner make it accessible to riders with special needs. Then the four girls meet a guest their own age. She's a former rider who has lost part of her leg in a motorbike accident. She doesn't plan to get on a horse ever again.
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Sadie
Courtney Summers
Sadie hasn't had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she's been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water. But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie's entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister's killer to justice and hits the road following a few meager clues to find him. When West McCray - a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America - overhears Sadie's story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie's journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it's too late.
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Saffron Ice Cream
Rashin Kheiriyeh
Rashin is an Iranian immigrant girl living in New York, excited by her first trip to Coney Island, and fascinated by the differences in the beach customs between her native Iran and her new home--but she misses the saffron flavored ice cream that she used to eat.
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Saga, Volume One
Brian K. Vaughan
When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe.
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Saint Iggy
K. L. Going
Iggy Corso, who lives in city public housing, is caught physically and spiritually between good and bad when he is kicked out of high school, goes searching for his missing mother, and causes his friend to get involved with the same dangerous drug dealer who deals to his parents.
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Saints and Misfits
S. K. Ali
Fifteen-year-old Janna Yusuf, a Flannery O'Connor-obsessed book nerd and the daughter of the only divorced mother at their mosque, tries to make sense of the events that follow when her best friend's cousin--a holy star in the Muslim community--attempts to assault her at the end of sophomore year.
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Sammy Goes Flying
Odette Elliott
Sammy dreams of flying. His older siblings are going on a school trip to an aeroplane museum. But Sammy is too small to go. Then Grandma plans a magical day out just for Sammy.
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Sammy Wakes His Dad
Chip Emmons
Sammy's father, who is in a wheelchair, is reluctant to join Sammy in going fishing, until his son's love finally moves him to action.
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Samurai Kids 1: White Crane
Sandy Fussell
Even though he has only one leg, Niya Moto is studying to be a samurai, and his five fellow-students are similarly burdened, but sensei Ki-Yaga, an ancient but legendary warrior, teaches them not only physical skills but mental and spiritual ones as well, so that they are well-equipped to face their most formidable opponents at the annual Samurai Games.
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Samurai Kids 2: Owl Ninja
Sandy Fussell
Sensei Ki-yaga leads Niya and the other students of the Cockroach Ryu on a journey to beg the feudal Emperor to stop war from breaking out between the mountain ryus, putting to the test the firm friendship and unusual skills of these physically-disabled samurai-in-training.
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Sarah Emma Edmonds Was a Great Pretender: The True Story of a Civil War Spy
Carrie Jones
A picture book biography of Sarah Emma Edmonds, a Canadian-born woman who served as a spy in the Union Army during the Civil War.
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Sarah's Sleepover
Bobbie Rodriguez
Sarah and her cousins are all set for a sleepover weekend complete with hot chocolate, pillow fights, and ghost stories—until the power goes out in a storm and plunges them into total darkness. Sarah isn't worried. She is able to guide the rest of the girls safely through the pitch-black house because she is comfortable moving in the dark; Sarah is blind.
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Saturday is Pattyday
Lesléa Newman
Although Frankie is hurt and confused when his two mommies separate, he is comforted by knowing that Patty will still be part of his life.
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Saturdays with Hitchcock
Ellen Wittlinger
Twelve-year-old Maisie feels that she has enough complications in her life: her actor uncle has moved in with her family while he recovers from an accident and her father is not pleased, her grandmother is slipping into dementia but wants to remarry, her mom has been laid off, and her best friend Cyrus, with whom she spends Saturdays watching classic movies, has revealed that he is gay--but Gary, the boy he has a crush on, seems more attracted to Maisie herself.
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Save the Date
Morgan Matson
When seventeen-year-old Charlie Grant's four older siblings reunite for a wedding, she is determined they will have a perfect weekend before the family home is sold, but last-minute disasters abound.
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Saving Baby Doe
Danette Vigilante
Lionel and Anisa are the best of friends and have seen each other through some pretty tough times--Anisa's dad died and Lionel's dad left, which is like a death for Lionel. They stick together no matter what. So when Lionel suggests a detour through a local construction site on their way home, Anisa doesn't say no. And that's where Lionel and Anisa make a startling discovery--a baby abandoned in a port-o-potty. Anisa and Lionel spring into action. And in saving Baby Doe, they end up saving so much more.