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:
-
She Loves You, She Loves You Not...
Julie Anne Peters
When seventeen-year-old Alyssa is disowned by her father for being a lesbian, she is sent off to a small town in Colorado to live with the mother she has never known, where she is forced to come to terms with herself and her family.
-
Shine
Lauren Myracle
When her best gay friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, sixteen-year-old Cat sets out to discover who in her small town did it.
-
Shining Star: The Anna May Wong Story
Paul Yoo
A biography of Chinese American film star Anna May Wong who, in spite of limited opportunities, achieved her dream of becoming an actress and worked to represent her race on screen in a truthful, positive manner.
-
Ship of Dolls
Shirley Parenteau
In 1927 Japan, after disobeying her parents, eleven-year-old Chiyo is sent to an exclusive boarding school where she feels lonely and homesick until the Friendship Doll exchange with America piques her interest, but a bully stands in her way.
-
Shooting the Moon
Frances O'Roark Dowell
After her brother TJ joins the army and is sent to Vietnam, 12-year-old Jamie Dexter is proud that TJ is following in their father's footsteps. Instead of letters, TJ sends Jamie undeveloped rolls of film, and what she sees when she develops them reveals a whole new side of the war.
-
Shy Mama's Halloween
Anne Broyles
For Anya, Dasha, Irina, and Dimitrii, newly arrived to this country, Halloween seems a wonderfully strange and exciting holiday. They enlist Mrs. Rumanski and her midnight-blue Singer sewing machine in the apartment downstairs to help with their costumes, and Papa agrees to take them out trick-or-treating. But Papa comes home sick that evening, and it looks as though the children will be watching the trick or treating from the upstairs window. Mama, who is frightened by so much in this new country, especially the thought of ghosts and goblins on the streets, surprises them all when she rises to the occasion and takes her young princess, witch, devil, and clown down the stairs and out into the night. As they go from house to house, they find that everyone along the street is friendly. No one seems to care that their "Thank yous" are said with an accent, or that Mama, in her babushka, can speak only a few words of English. For Anya, Dasha, Irina, and Dimitrii, it is their first sense of belonging in their new country, of savoring the fun and magic of Halloween and the generosity of strangers. For Mama, it is a much greater step out into a new world, led by her children.
-
Sibling Split: Family Fix-It Plan
M. G. Higgins
Siblings Arnie and Annabelle are horrified by the news that their parents are separating, and even more devastated at the idea that they are being split up, so they decide to create a video montage of their favorite family memories in the hope that it will convince their parents to stay together.
-
Sibling Split: Party of Nine
M. G. Higgins
It is the first Thanksgiving since their parents split up, and twelve-year-old Arnie has come to the farm to spend the weekend with eleven-year-old Annabelle and their father at the farm--and when it starts to looks like it will just be the three of them, Arnie and Annabelle decide to invite several of their neighbors over for the feast.
-
Sibling Split: The Impossible Wish
M. G. Higgins
Months after their parents divorce, Annabelle who lives with their father, and Arnie, who lives with their mother, still nurture the hope that somehow their parents will get back together, and that once more they will be a family.
-
Sibling Split: Trouble in the City
M. G. Higgins
Now that summer is over and school is beginning separated siblings Annabelle and Arnie are struggling to cope with the reality of life apart--but when Annabelle comes to her mother and brother's apartment in the city a lot of repressed emotion suddenly overflows.
-
Signal
Cynthia C. DeFelice
After moving with his emotionally distant father to the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, twelve-year-old Owen faces a lonely summer until he meets an abused girl who may be a space alien.
-
Sign Up Here: A Story about Friendship
Kathryn Cole
When nobody will let her join their club, Dee-Dee decides to start a club of her own that welcomes everybody.
-
Silas' Seven Grandparents
Anita Horrocks
Silas' Seven Grandparents is a fun and loving story about having multiple sets of grandparents and step-grandparents. When Silas' parents go away on a business trip, all seven grandparents invite Silas to stay with them...how can he choose one without hurting the others' feelings?
-
Silence
Deborah A. Lytton
After an accident robs Stella of her hearing and her dream of going to Broadway, she meets Hayden, a boy who stutters, and comes to learn what it truly means to connect and communicate in a world filled with silence.
-
Silent Days, Silent Dreams
Allen Say
James Castle was born two months premature on September 25, 1899, on a farm in Garden Valley, Idaho. He was deaf, mute, autistic, and probably dyslexic. He didn't walk until he was four; he would never learn to speak, write, read, or use sign language. Yet, today Castle's artwork hangs in major museums throughout the world. The Philadelphia Museum of Art opened "James Castle: A Retrospective" in 2008. The 2013 Venice Biennale included eleven works by Castle in the feature exhibition "The Encyclopedic Palace." And his reputation continues to grow. Caldecott Medal winner Allen Say, author of the acclaimed memoir Drawing from Memory, takes readers through an imagined look at Castle's childhood, allows them to experience his emergence as an artist despite the overwhelming difficulties he faced, and ultimately reveals the triumphs that he would go on to achieve.
-
Silent Movie
Avi .
In the early years of the twentieth century, a Swedish family encounters separation and other hardships upon immigrating to New York City until the son is cast in a silent movie, in a picture book that evokes an actual silent movie.
-
Silhouette of a Sparrow
Molly Beth Griffin
During the summer of 1926 in the lake resort town of Excelsior, Minnesota, sixteen-year-old Garnet, who dreams of indulging her passion for ornithology, is resigned to marrying a nice boy and settling into middle-class homemaking until she takes a liberating job in a hat shop and begins an intense, secret relationship with a daring and beautiful flapper.
-
Silver Shoes
Caroline Binch
Molly loves to dance, and she desperately wants some silver shoes for her first dance class. But her mum says she has to wait!
-
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
Becky Albertalli
Sixteen-year-old, not-so-openly-gay Simon Spier is blackmailed into playing wingman for his classmate or else his sexual identity--and that of his pen pal--will be revealed.
-
Since We're Friends: An Autism Picture Book
Celeste Shally
A boy describes his friendship with Matt, whose autism spectrum disorder causes him to behave strangely at times, and how he make things easier for Matt at school and in their neighborhood.
-
Singing Hands
Delia Ray
In the late 1940s, twelve-year-old Gussie, a minister's daughter, learns the definition of integrity while helping with a celebration at the Alabama School for the Deaf--her punishment for misdeeds against her deaf parents and their boarders.
-
Singing Tree and Laughing Water
Sylvia Hardwick
Relates the adventures of two Native American sisters after they go to live with a foster mother.
-
Single-Parent Families
Sarah L. Schuette
Simple text and photographs present single-parent families, including how family members interact with one another.
-
Sing to the Stars
Mary Brigid Barrett and Sandra Speidel
When Ephram becomes friends with a blind man in his neighborhood and finds out that Mr. Washington was a famous pianist who hasn't touched a piano for a long time, he resolves to get the man back on stage.
-
Sister Mischief
Laura Goode
Esme Rockett, also known as MC Ferocious, rocks her suburban Minnesota Christian high school with more than the hip-hop music she makes with best friends Marcy (DJ SheStorm) and Tess (The ConTessa) when she develops feelings for her co-MC, Rowie (MC Rohini).