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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Stork M.I.A.
Sandro Isaack
Dad Dad Mom Mom is a picture book series that features the episodes in the lives of Dad and Dad, and Mom and Mom. Its aim is to create a picture book universe for children of Same Gender Couples. STORK M.I.A. is the first volume of this self-published children's book series. It follows the story of Dad and Dad, who were tired of waiting for the Stork, and decided to find her and ask for a baby. They search for the Stork around the world, with the help of Mom and Mom, turning this story into an adventure, rather than a didactic book for children of same gender couples.
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Stranded
Ben Mikaelsen
Twelve-year-old Koby, who has lost a foot in an accident, sees a chance to prove her self-reliance to her parents when she tries to rescue two stranded pilot whales near her home in the Florida Keys.
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Stranded in Boringsville
Catherine Bateson
Following her parents' separation, twelve-year-old Rain moves with her mother to the country, where she befriends the unpopular boy who lives next door and also seeks a way to cope with her feelings toward her father and his new girlfriend.
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Strawberry Moon
Karen English
While driving to Auntie Dot's house, Junie tells her children about spending fifth grade there during her parent's separation many years earlier, when finding a best friend seemed almost as important as seeing her mother again.
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Street Dreams
Tama Wise
Tyson Rua has more than his fair share of problems growing up in South Auckland. Working a night job to support his mother and helping bring up his two younger brothers is just the half of it. His best friend Rawiri is falling afoul of a broken home, and now Tyson's fallen in love at first sight. Only thing is, it's another guy. Living life on the sidelines of the local hip-hop scene, Tyson finds that to succeed in becoming a local graffiti artist or in getting the man of his dreams, he's going to have to get a whole lot more involved. And that means more problems. The least of which is the leader of the local rap crew he's found himself running with. Love, life, and hip-hop never do things by half.
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Strider
Beverly Cleary
Strider has a new habit. Whenever we stop, he places his paw on my foot. It isn't an accident because he always does it. I like to think he doesn't want to leave me. Can a stray dog change the life of a teenage boy? It looks as if Strider can. He's a dog that loves to run; because of Strider, Leigh Botts finds himself running -- well enough to join the school track team. Strider changes Leigh on the inside, too, as he finally begins to accept his parents' divorce and gets to know a redheaded girl he's been admiring. With Strider's help, Leigh finds that the future he once hated to be asked about now holds something he never expected: hope
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Stuck in Neutral
Terry Trueman
Fourteen-year-old Shawn McDaniel suffers from severe cerebral palsy and cannot function physically in any way, not even to show his intelligence and awareness of his life, his family, and his condition. How does he cope with the suspicion that his father is planning to kill him?
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Stuck Rubber Baby
Howard Cruse
In the 1960s American South, a young gas station attendant named Toland Polk is rejected from the Army draft for admitting 'homosexual tendencies,' and falls in with a close-knit group of young locals yearning to break from the conformity of their hometown through civil rights activism, folk music, and gay-friendly nightclubs.
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Stuck with the Blooz
Caron Levis
When a monster named the Blooz comes to visit, a child copes with emotions in this whimsical debut picture book about having--and getting rid of--the blues.
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Stumpkin
Lucy Ruth Cummins
A stemless pumpkin that yearns to be a Halloween jack-o-lantern watches sadly as all of the other pumpkins in the shop are chosen.
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Suckerpunch
David Hernandez
Shy, seventeen-year-old Marcus and his sixteen-year-old brother, Enrique, accompanied by two friends, drive from their home in southern California to Monterey to confront the abusive father who walked out a year earlier, and who now wants to return home.
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Suicide Notes
Michael Thomas Ford
Brimming with sarcasm, fifteen-year-old Jeff describes his stay in a psychiatric ward after attempting to commit suicide.
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Summer Camp Adventure
Marsha Hubler
Having taken a crash course in American Sign Language, Camp Tioga junior counselor Skye tries to communicate with a troublesome camper who is deaf, and when he disappears on horseback into the hills, she and Chad lead the rescue team.
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Summerlost
Ally Condie
It's the first real summer since the accident that killed Cedar's father and younger brother, Ben. Cedar and what’s left of her family are returning to the town of Iron Creek for the summer. They’re just settling into their new house when a boy named Leo, dressed in costume, rides by on his bike. Intrigued, Cedar follows him to the renowned Summerlost theatre festival. Soon, she not only has a new friend in Leo and a job working concessions at the festival, she finds herself surrounded by mystery. The mystery of the tragic, too-short life of the Hollywood actress who haunts the halls of Summerlost. And the mystery of the strange gifts that keep appearing for Cedar.
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Summer of a Thousand Pies
Margaret Dilloway
After her father goes to jail, Cady Bennett, twelve, is taken from foster care to spend a summer with her estranged Aunt Michelle, trying to save her failing pie shop.
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Summer of Salt
Katrina Leno
No one on the island of By-the-Sea would call the Fernweh women what they are, but if you need the odd bit of help, such as a sleeping aid concocted by moonlight, they are the ones to ask. Georgina Fernweh waits for the tingle of magic in her fingers-- magic that has already touched her twin sister, Mary. But with her eighteenth birthday looming at the end of her last summer on the island, Georgina fears her gift will never come. She meets and falls in love with Prue Lowry, a visitor to the island. When a three-hundred-year-old bird, Annabella is found violently murdered, suddenly the island doesn't seem so magical. Georgina turns to the Ouija board to discover the dark secrets of Annabella's death.
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Summer of the Oak Moon
Laura Templeton
Rejected by the exclusive women's college she has her heart set on, Tess Seibert dreads the hot, aimless summer ahead. But when a chance encounter with a snake introduces her to Jacob Lane, a relationship blooms, challenging everything she's ever believed about love. When Jacob confesses that Tess's uncle is trying to steal his family's land, Tess comes face-to-face with the hatred that simmers just below the surface of the bay and marshes she's loved since birth.
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Sunday Shopping
Sally Derby
Every Sunday night a young girl and her grandmother go on an imaginary shopping trip using play money and the advertisements in the newspaper as a guide for their purchases.
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Sunny
Jason Reynolds
Sunny tries to shine despite his troubled past in this third novel in the critically acclaimed Track series from National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds. Ghost. Patina. Sunny. Lu. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds, with personalities that are explosive when they clash. But they are also four kids chosen for an elite middle school track team—a team that could qualify them for the Junior Olympics. They all have a lot of lose, but they all have a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves. Sunny is the main character in this novel, the third of four books in Jason Reynold’s electrifying middle grade series. Sunny is just that—sunny. Always ready with a goofy smile and something nice to say, Sunny is the chillest dude on the Defenders team. But Sunny’s life hasn’t always been sun beamy-bright. You see, Sunny is a murderer. Or at least he thinks of himself that way. His mother died giving birth to him, and based on how Sunny’s dad treats him—ignoring him, making Sunny call him Darryl, never “Dad”—it’s no wonder Sunny thinks he’s to blame. It seems the only thing Sunny can do right in his dad’s eyes is win first place ribbons running the mile, just like his mom did. But Sunny doesn’t like running, never has. So he stops. Right in the middle of a race.
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Sunshine Picklelime
Pamela Ferguson
PJ Picklelime can talk to birds, hear bells ringing in a woman's curls, and spot moonbows in the night sky, but when a close friend dies and her parents separate, she searches for understanding and a way to recover her sunshine.
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Super Late Bloomer
Julia Kaye
Instead of a traditional written diary, Julia Kaye has always turned to art as a means of self-reflection. So when she began her gender transition in 2016, she decided to use her popular webcomic, Up and Out, to process her journey and help others with similar struggles realize they weren’t alone. Julia’s poignant, relatable comics honestly depict her personal ups and downs while dealing with the various issues involved in transitioning—from struggling with self-acceptance and challenging societal expectations, to moments of self-love and joy. Super Late Bloomer both educates and inspires, as Julia faces her difficulties head-on and commits to being wholly, authentically who she was always meant to be.
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Surviving the City
Tasha Spillett
Tasha Spillet's graphic-novel debut, Surviving the City, is a story about womanhood, friendship, resilience, and the anguish of a missing loved one. Miikwan and Dez are best friends. Miikwan's Anishinaabe; Dez is Inninew. Together, the teens navigate the challenges of growing up in an urban landscape - they're so close, they even completed their Berry Fast together. However, when Dez's grandmother becomes too sick, Dez is told she can't stay with her anymore. With the threat of a group home looming, Dez can't bring herself to go home and disappears. Miikwan is devastated, and the wound of her missing mother resurfaces. Will Dez's community find her before it's too late? Will Miikwan be able to cope if they don't?
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Susan Laughs
Jeanne Willis
Rhyming couplets describe a wide range of common emotions and activities experienced by a little girl who uses a wheelchair.
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Swap!
Steve Light
A peg-legged youngster uses his bartering skills to trade for sails, anchors, a ship's wheel and other necessary supplies to fix their ship and make a friend in the process.
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Sweethearts of Rhythm
Marilyn Nelson
A look at a 1940's all-female jazz band, that originated from a boarding school in Mississippi and found its way to the most famous ballrooms in the country, offering solace during the hard years of the war.