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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As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl
John Colapinto
In 1967, after a baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment. On the advice of a renowned expert in gender identity and sexual reassignment, the boy was surgically altered to live as a girl. This book is the human drama of one man's - and one family's - amazing survival in the face of odds.
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A Solitary Blue
Cynthia Voigt
Jeff's mother, who deserted the family years before, reenters his life and widens the gap between Jeff and his father, a gap that only truth, love, and friendship can heal.
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A Step Toward Falling
Cammie McGovern
When their inaction during an attack on a disabled girl earns them community service at a center for people with disabilities, Emily and Lucas bond while trying to make up for their mistake, and wonder if they can make it right with the girl who suffered because of them.
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As the Crow Flies
Melanie Gillman
Charlie Lamonte is thirteen years old, queer, black, and questioning what was once a firm belief in God. So, she's spending a week of her summer vacation at an all-white Christian backpacking camp. And she can't help but poke holes in the pious obliviousness of this storied sanctuary with little regard for people like herself...or her fellow camper, Sydney.
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A Tale of Two Daddies
Vanita Oelschlager
A young girl describes how her two daddies help her through her day, including her poppa cooking eggs and toast, her daddy fixing her knee when she is hurt, and both fathers being there for her when she needs love.
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A Tale of Two Mommies
Vanita Oelschlager
A young boy describes to two other children how his two mommies help him with all his needs.
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A Taste of Colored Water
Matt Faulkner
LuLu and Jelly are very excited to see the "colored" water they heard about in the city's water fountain, but are surprised to learn what "colored" water actually means.
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A Thirst for Home
Christine Leronimo
Alemitu lives with her mother in a poor village in Ethiopia, where she must walk miles for water and hunger roars in her belly. Even though life is difficult, she dreams of someday knowing more about the world. When her mother has no choice but to leave her at an orphanage to give her a chance at a better life, an American family adopts Alemitu.
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A Time of Fire
Robert Westall
In England during World War II, with his mother dead from a German bomb and his father off in training and action but keeping him informed by letter, Sonny tries to understand the darkest truths of war and retribution.
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A Time to Dance
Padma Venkatraman
In India, a girl who excels at Bharatanatyam dance refuses to give up after losing a leg in an accident.
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At My House What Makes a Family is Love
Dee Dee Walter
What makes a family? A single mom? Two Dads? This book talks about all the different families. Families are ever changing in today's society. This shows that all families should be embraced and celebrated. Families are what makes them and the ultimate connecting factor is love.
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A Trick of the Light
Lois Metzger
Fifteen-year-old Mike desperately attempts to take control as his parents separate and his life falls apart.
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At the Bottom of the World (Jack and the Geniuses Series #1)
Bill Nye and Gregory Mone
Traveling to Antarctica for a prestigious science competition, twelve-year-old Jack and his genius foster siblings, Ava and Matt, become caught up in a mystery involving a missing scientist.
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Aunt Minnie McGranahan
Mary Skillings Prigger
The townspeople in St. Clere, Kansas, are sure it will never work out when the neat and orderly spinster, Minnie McGranahan, takes her nine orphaned nieces and nephews into her home in 1920.
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Aunt Pearl
Monica Kulling
Aunt Pearl arrives one day pushing a shopping cart full of her worldly goods. Her sister Rose has invited her to come live with her family. Six-year-old Marta is happy to meet her aunt, who takes her out to look for treasure on garbage day, and who shows her camp group how to decorate a coffee table with bottle caps. But almost immediately, Pearl and Rose start to clash ― over Pearl’s belongings crammed into the house, and over Rose’s household rules. As the weeks pass, Pearl grows quieter and more withdrawn, until, one morning, she is gone. Acclaimed author Monica Kulling brings sensitivity to this story about homelessness, family and love, beautifully illustrated in Irene Luxbacher’s rich collage style.
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Autism and Me: Sibling Stories
Ouisie Shapiro
In these moving essays, children tell their stories of what it is like to live with a sibling who has autism.
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Autoboyography
Christina Lauren
High school senior Tanner Scott has hidden his bisexuality since his family moved to Utah, but he falls hard for Sebastian, a Mormon mentoring students in a writing seminar Tanner's best friend convinced him to take.
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A Very Important Day
Maggie Rugg Herold
Two-hundred nineteen people from thirty-two different countries make their way to downtown New York in a snowstorm to be sworn in as citizens of the United States.
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A Very Special Critter
Gina Mayer and Mercer Mayer
In this wise and funny picture-book adventure, a special student joins Little Critter's class at school. The new student uses a wheelchair, and Little Critter is worried. Will his classmate be very different? Will the class know how to act around him? It's an honest, realistic look at ways kids deal successfully with the unknown -- mixed with a big dollop of Mercer Mayer humor for good measure.
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A Very, Very Bad Thing
Jeffrey Self
Marley is comfortable with being gay in Winston-Salem, but he never had any real passions until he met Christopher, son of a bigoted television evangelist; the two become an inseparable couple until Christopher's parents send him to a religious program intended to "cure" him of being gay, and outraged Marley tells a very big lie--and then has to deal with the repercussions.
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A Vigil for Joe Rose: Stories of Being Out in High School
Michael Whatling
A Vigil for Joe Rose is a collection of stories told with empathy and humour about the experience of being out in high school. As a unified collection, these eight short stories and a novella chart the journey of the main characters from first coming out to their growth into confident young gay men, and the challenges, triumphs, and losses along the way.
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A Visit to the Big House
Oliver Butterworth
When Willy, Rose, and their mother go to visit Daddy in prison, they are quite anxious. But once Daddy appears and they can talk and ask questions.
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Away
Emil Sher
A gentle tale told entirely through sticky notes between a mother and daughter as the girl's departure for her first summer camp draws near demonstrates how love can be found even in scribbled messages and other unlikely places.
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Babu's Song
Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen
In Tanzania, Bernardi's mute grandfather makes him a wonderful music box and then helps him realize his dream of owning a soccer ball and going to school.
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Baby's First Words
Stella Blackstone and Sunny Scribens
Brief text relates the daily activities of a city baby with two daddies by featuring terms for objects, actions, and sounds. On die-cut board pages with tabs.