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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The Other Side
Jacqueline Woodson
Two girls, one white and one black, gradually get to know each other as they sit on the fence that divides their town.
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The Other Side of Dark
Sarah Smith
Since losing both of her parents, fifteen-year-old Katie can see and talk to ghosts, which makes her a loner until fellow student Law sees her drawing of a historic house and together they seek a treasure rumored to be hidden there by illegal slave-traders.
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The Pants Project
Cat Clarke
A Transformer is a robot in disguise. Liv is a boy in disguise. It's that simple. Liv knows he was always meant to be a boy, but with his new school's terrible dress code, he can't even wear pants. Only skirts. Operation: Pants Project begins! The only way for Liv to get what he wants is to go after it himself. But to Liv, this isn't just a mission to change the school policy--it's a mission to change his life. And that's a pretty big deal. Award-wnning author Cat Clarke makes her middle-grade debut with this hilarious and heartfelt underdog story. Liv may not be an alien-fighting robot, but he is fighting to make the world a better place--one leg at a time.
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The Pearl Thief
Elizabeth Wein
When fifteen-year-old Julia Beaufort-Stuart wakes up in the hospital, she knows the lazy summer break she'd imagined won't be exactly like she anticipated. And once she returns to her grandfather's estate, a bit banged up but alive, she begins to realize that her injury might not have been an accident. One of her family's employees is missing, and he disappeared on the very same day she landed in the hospital. Desperate to figure out what happened, she befriends Euan McEwen, the Scottish Traveller boy who found her when she was injured, and his standoffish sister, Ellen. As Julie grows closer to this family, she experiences some of the prejudices they've grown used to firsthand, a stark contrast to her own upbringing, and finds herself exploring thrilling new experiences that have nothing to do with a missing-person investigation. Her memory of that day returns to her in pieces, and when a body is discovered, her new friends are caught in the crosshairs of long-held biases about Travellers. Julie must get to the bottom of the mystery in order to keep them from being framed for the crime.
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The Pea That was Me: An Egg Donation Story
Kimberly Kluger-Bell
Explains egg donation through pictures and simple words.
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The People of Twelve Thousand Winters
Trinka Hakes Noble
Ten-year-old Walking Turtle, of the Lenni-Lenape tribe, is close to his younger cousin, Little Talk, who has difficulty walking and worries about what will become of him when the time comes for Walking Turtle to leave his childhood friends to begin training at warrior school.
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
Charlie struggles to cope with complex world of high school as he deals with the confusions of sex and love, the temptations of drugs, and the pain of losing a close friend and a favorite aunt.
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The Pirate of Kindergarden
Georgle Ella Lyon
Ginny's eyes play tricks on her, making her see everything double, but when she goes to vision screening at school and discovers that not everyone sees this way, she learns that her double vision can be cured.
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The Poet X
Elizabeth Acevedo
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, Xiomara Batista has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. She pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers--especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. Mami is determined to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, and Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. When she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, she can't stop thinking about performing her poems.
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The Popularity Papers Book 2: The Long-Distance Dispatch between Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
After spending a year studying popularity, Julie and Lydia are finally ready to put their hard-earned lessons to use in junior high. But before they can conquer the world together, Lydia's mom gets a job in London.
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The Popularity Papers Book 3: Words of (Questionable) Wisdom from Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
Twelve-year-old best friends Julie and Lydia are reunited after six months apart, but the news that their friend Sukie's mother has died after a long illness causes them to reevaluate their goals and focus on being supportive of the friends they already have.
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The Popularity Papers Book 4: The Rocky Road Trip of Lydia Goldblatt & Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
It's summertime, and Julie and Lydia are going on a road trip! After all the ups and downs of their first year in junior high, they're looking forward to seeing the sights and getting some new perspective on their quest for popularity.
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The Popularity Papers Book 5: The Awesomely Awful Melodies of Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
Fresh from their epic summer road trip, Lydia and Julie are back and ready to take seventh grade by storm. Well, at least Lydia is. She wants to start a band and reinvent herself as a rock star. After making Lydia promise that this is absolutely not another disaster-waiting-to-happen scheme for popularity, Julie agrees. Add Roland (expert at the guitar-like hardingfele) and Jane (expert at drama)...and the Macramé Owls are born! Unfortunately, none of them are expert musicians. Despite their lack of skills, Lydia and Julie find themselves riding a wave of notoriety. The girls may have accidentally stumbled upon the secret to popularity in their new rock 'n' roll personas. But there's still the problem of actually playing their instruments.
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The Popularity Papers Book 6: Love and Other Fiascos with Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
When Julie and Roland become an official couple, Lydia and Julie try to find romantic guidance, while Lydia's mother announces her plans to marry Lydia's soccer coach, Eric.
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The Popularity Papers Book 7: The Less-Than-Hidden Secrets and Final Revelations of Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
Lydia and Julie have been through many adventures as they navigated junior high and the search for popularity, but as they near the end of seventh grade, life seems to be settling into a familiar rhythm. And then ... disaster strikes! Literally. The peaceful world of Hamlin Junior High is rocked when the students learn that they're going to have to play host to new students whose junior high school burned down. The outside threat bands the Hamlin kids together against a common enemy--for a while. When someone gets their hands on Lydia and Julie's notebook and starts papering the school with some of the girls' most private thoughts, no one from either school wants anything to do with them. With the big, combined-school dance looming, how can the girls stop the war and redeem their rotten reputations?
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The Popularity Papers: Research for the Social Improvement and General Betterment of Lydia Goldblatt & Julie Graham-Chang
Amy Ignatow
Two best friends embark on a project to study the behavior and taste of the popular girls at their elementary school so that by the time they get to middle school they too will be in the right crowd. Novel appears in the form of a scrapbook.
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The Porcupine of Truth
Bill Konigsberg
Carson Smith isn't thrilled to be spending the summer with her estranged dad in Billings, Montana. But then he meets Aisha Stinson, the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. And the smartest. And the funniest. They connect like he never has with anyone. Also she's a lesbian. So there's that. Carson's dad is still bitter about the disappearance of his dad more than thirty years earlier. When Carson and Aisha discover a box full of cards from his grandfather, some of them recent, they realize the old man is still out there somewhere. What are two bored teenagers in the middle of nowhere to do? So Carson and Aisha begin a journey with no destination, to find a man who wanted to be lost, in an unreliable Dodge Neon, with one very prickly mascot. And what comes next is an extraordinary, enlightening, hilarious, inspiring, complete and utter mindblower of a road trip that will transform both their lives.
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The Possibility of Somewhere
Julia Day
Although on opposite sides of every social hierarchy their friends and families can imagine, including race, class, and social status, popular Ash Gupta, the son of wealthy, immigrant Asian-Indian parents, and anti-social Eden Moore, whose biggest goal is to escape her family's poverty and trailer-park existence, grow close as they compete to become class valedictorian.
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The Prince and the Dressmaker
Jen Wang
Prince Sebastian is looking for a bride--or rather, his parents are looking for one for him. Sebastian is too busy hiding his secret life from everyone. At night he puts on daring dresses and takes Paris by storm as the fabulous Lady Crystallia--the hottest fashion icon in the world capital of fashion!
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The Prince S.
Mikayla Spence
He dreamed of being a princess. He went out and did his best to reach his goal. Meet Prince S.
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The Princess and the Pony
Kate Beaton
Princess Pinecone would like a real war horse for her birthday, instead of which she gets a plump, cute pony--but sometimes cuteness can be a kind of weapon, especially in a fight with dodgeballs and spitballs and hairballs and squareballs.
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The Prince Who Was Just Himself
Silke Schnee
Lacking the athletic and reading skills of his older brothers, Prince Noah uses love and compassion to save the kingdom from the Black Knight.
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The Proposal (Christy Series #5)
C. Archer and Catherine Marshall
Blinded in a riding accident, Christy has self-doubts about resuming her career and accepting the town minister's marriage proposal.
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The Pros of Cons
Allison Cherry, Lindsay Ribar, and Michelle Schusterman
Phoebe Byrd, Vanessa Montoya-O'Callaghan, and Callie Buchannan are three teenagers with very different interests and somewhat different problems, but today they are all in Orlando to attend different conventions/competitions--and when a crazy mix-up in the hotel lobby brings the three girls together, they form an unlikely friendship against the chaotic background of the Orlando convention scene.
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The Purim Superhero
Elisabeth Kushner
Nate wants to dress as an alien for Purim but his friend wants him to wear a superhero costume like the other boys, so Nate seeks guidance from his Daddy and Abba, who advise that being yourself makes you stronger.