Diverse Families

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.

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The Meaning of Birds

Jaye Robin Brown

Before: Jess has always struggled with the fire inside her. But when she meets Vivi, everything changes. As they fall for each other, Vivi helps Jess deal with her anger and pain and encourages her to embrace her artistic talent. And suddenly Jess’s future is a blank canvas, filled with possibilities. After: When Vivi unexpectedly dies, Jess’s perfect world is erased. As she spirals out of control, Jess pushes away everyone around her and throws out her plans for art school. Because art is Vivi and Vivi is gone forever. Right when Jess feels at her lowest, she makes a surprising friend who just might be able to show her a new way to channel her rage, passion, and creativity. But will Jess ever be able to forge a new path for herself without Vivi? A beautiful exploration of first love and first loss, this novel effortlessly weaves together past and present to tell a profound story about how you can become whole again when it seems like you’ve lost the most important part of yourself.
The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed

Judy Shepard

The mother of Matthew Shepard shares her story about her son's death and the choice she made to become an international gay rights activist. Today, the name Matthew Shepard is synonymous with gay rights, but before his grisly murder in 1998, Matthew was simply her son. For the first time in book form, Judy Shepard speaks about her loss, sharing memories of Matthew, their life as a typical American family, and the pivotal event that changed everything. The book follows the Shepard family in the days after the crime, when their incapacitated son was on life support; how they learned of the response from strangers all across America who held candlelit vigils and memorial services for their child; and finally, how they struggled to navigate the legal system as Matthew's murderers were on trial. It not only captures the historical significance and civil rights issues, but it also chronicles one ordinary woman's struggle to cope with the unthinkable.
The Meaning of Sisterhood

Beverly Sommers

After their father died, Ariel and Kirsten were finally going to be real sisters, and they had a lot to teach each other.
The Memory Coat

Elvira Woodruff

In the early 1900s, two cousins leave their Russian shtetl with the rest of their family to come to America, hopeful that they will all pass the dreaded inspection at Ellis Island.
The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James

Ashley Herring Blake

When Sunny St. James receives a new heart, she decides to set off on a New Life Plan: 1) do awesome amazing things she could never do before; 2) find a new best friend; and 3) kiss a boy for the first time. Her New Life Plan seems to be racing forward, but when she meets her new best friend Quinn, Sunny questions whether she really wants to kiss a boy at all. With the reemergence of her mother, Sunny begins a journey to becoming the new Sunny St. James
The Mirror in Mommy's House / The Mirror in Daddy's House

Luis Amavisca, Kim Griffin, and Ben Dawlatly

The child of divorced parents describes the enjoyable things to be found in each parent's house and how both houses share a magical mirror.
The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher

Dana Alison Levy

Relates the adventures of a family with two fathers, four adopted boys, and a variety of pets as they make their way through a school year, Kindergarten through sixth grade, and deal with a grumpy new neighbor.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post

Emily M. Danforth

Set in rural Montana in the early 1990s, Emily M. Danforth's The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a powerful and widely acclaimed YA coming-of-age novel in the tradition of the classic Annie on My Mind. Cameron Post feels a mix of guilt and relief when her parents die in a car accident. Their deaths mean they will never learn the truth she eventually comes to: that she's gay. Orphaned, Cameron comes to live with her old-fashioned grandmother and ultraconservative aunt Ruth. There she falls in love with her best friend, a beautiful cowgirl. When she's eventually outed, her aunt sends her to God's Promise, a religious conversion camp that is supposed to "cure" her homosexuality. At the camp, Cameron comes face to face with the cost of denying her true identity.
The Missing Manatee

Cynthia DeFelice

All Skeet Waters wants is to catch a big, beautiful tarpon on his fly rod - and to keep everything else in his life in Florida the way it's always been. But on his spring break from school, Skeet overhears his mother telling his father to move out permanently. Then, while riding in his boat to escape his parents' troubles, he discovers a manatee that's been shot in the head. Skeet puts aside his search for the manatee and its killer when Dirty Dan the Tarpon Man offers to take him out to catch his first tarpon on a fly. Because of Dan, Skeet begins to unravel the mysteries surrounding the manatee's apparent murder and his parents' dissolving marriage. Skeet discovers that life is a lot like tarpon fishing, in which you can't look just at the surface of the water - you have to look through it, at what lies beneath.
The Mitten String

Jennifer Rosner

Ruthie Tober's family is known for the beautiful, warm mittens they knit so when she and her mother meet a deaf woman and her baby and give them shelter, Ruthie decides to design very special mittens for them.
The Mulberry Bird: An Adoption Story

Anne Braff Brodzinsky

Although she loves her baby very much, a young mother bird gives him up for adoption because she is unable to give him the home which he needs.
The Music of What Happens

Bill Konigsberg

It is summer in Phoenix, and seventeen-year-old Maximo offers to help Jordan, a fellow student in high school, with the food truck that belonged to Jordan's deceased father, and which may be the only thing standing between homelessness for Jordan and his mom; the boys are strongly attracted to each other, but as their romance develops it is threatened by the secrets they are hiding--and by the racism and homophobia of those around them.
The Naming of Tishkin Silk

Glenda Millard

The first book in the Kingdom of Silk series. Griffin has a secret in his heart that nobody else knows - until he meets Layla., a princess with a daisy-chain crown.
The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

S. Bear Bergman

Alternately unsettling and affirming, devastating and delicious, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You is a new collection of essays on gender and identity by S. Bear Bergman that is irrevocably honest and endlessly illuminating. With humor and grace, these essays deal with issues from women's spaces to the old boys' network, from gay male bathhouses to lesbian potlucks, from being a child to preparing to have one. Throughout, S. Bear Bergman shows us there are things you learn when you're visibly different from those around you—whether it's being transgressively gendered or readably queer. As a transmasculine person, Bergman keeps readers breathless and rapt in the freakshow tent long after the midway has gone dark, when the good hooch gets passed around and the best stories get told. Ze offers unique perspectives on issues that challenge, complicate, and confound the "official stories" about how gender and sexuality work.
The Nerdiest, Wimpiest, Dorkiest I Funny Ever (I Funny #6)

James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein

Comedian Jamie Grimm can't help feeling like he's reached the top--he has his own smash hit TV show and he's won a national funny-kid competition. But now he's taking his fame and fortune to international levels by competing in the upcoming world kid comic contest! Will Jamie prove that he's the funniest kid on earth--or does he stand (or sit!) to lose his crown?
The New Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Mama Bear, Mommy Bear, and Baby Bear

Beth McMurray

The new Goldilocks and the Three Bears helps celebrate the diversity of loving families. This version follows Mama Bear, Mommy Bear, and Baby Bear as they encounter the timeless character of Goldilocks.
The Newspaper Pirates

J. Wallace Skelton

When Anthony Bartholomew hears his dads grumble that Newspaper Pirates must be stealing their paper, he decides to solve the problem himself. Watching carefully, hunting for clues and laying traps, Anthony Bartholomew keeps at it until the mystery is solved and the newspaper secured.
The Night Dad Went to Jail: What to Expect When Someone You Love Goes to Jail

Melissa Higgins

When someone you love goes to jail, you might feel lost, scared, and even mad. What do you do? No matter who your loved one is, this story can help you through the tough times.
The Night Diary

Veera Hiranandani

It's 1947, and India, newly independent of British rule, has been separated into two countries: Pakistan and India. The divide has created much tension between Hindus and Muslims, and hundreds of thousands are killed crossing borders. Half-Muslim, half-Hindu twelve-year-old Nisha doesn't know where she belongs, or what her country is anymore. When Papa decides it's too dangerous to stay in what is now Pakistan, Nisha and her family become refugees and embark first by train but later on foot to reach her new home. The journey is long, difficult, and dangerous, and after losing her mother as a baby, Nisha can't imagine losing her homeland, too. But even if her country has been ripped apart, Nisha still believes in the possibility of putting herself back together.
The Notations of Cooper Cameron

Jane O'Reilly

At the family cabin by the lake where his grandfather died two years ago, eleven-year-old Cooper Cameron spends the summer trying to rid himself of the rituals that allow him to cope with his grief and fear.
The Not-So-Only Child

Heather Jopling

Larissa is an only child, but she is not alone! See how big this only child's family is! This book shows that an only child can still have a very full family with different lifestyles and ethnicities represented in her world.
The One Where the Kid Nearly Jumps to His Death and Lands in California

Mary Hershey

Alastair, a thirteen-year-old who calls himself "Stump" because of his amputated leg, must face a summer at his wealthy but estranged father's beach house in Los Angeles, where he meets his stepmother, falls in love with a teenaged soap opera star, and decides to train for a race with a former Olympic swim coach.
The Only Boy in Ballet Class

Denise Gruska

Tucker Dohr loves ballet but is constantly teased by football players his age for being a sissy. However, they see him in a whole new light when circumstances place him in a position to help them win the football championship.
The Other F-Word

Natasha Friend

Milo has two great moms, but he's never known what it's like to have a dad. When Milo's doctor suggests asking his biological father to undergo genetic testing to shed some light on Milo's extreme allergies, he realizes this is a golden opportunity to find the man he's always wondered about. Hollis's mom Leigh hasn't been the same since her other mom, Pam, passed away seven years ago. But suddenly, Leigh seems happy—giddy, even—by the thought of reconnecting with Hollis's half-brother Milo. Hollis and Milo were conceived using the same sperm donor. They met once, years ago, before Pam died.
The Other Half of My Heart

Sundee Tucker Frazier

Twin daughters of interracial parents, eleven-year-olds Keira and Minna have very different skin tones and personalities, but it is not until their African American grandmother enters them in the Miss Black Pearl Pre-Teen competition in North Carolina that red-haired and pale-skinned Minna realizes what life in their small town in the Pacific Northwest has been like for her more outgoing, darker-skinned sister.