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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Welcome Home, Forever Child: A Celebration of Children Adopted as Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Beyond
Christine Mitchell
A book that genuinely celebrates a young child joining their forever family past infancy. With its touching message of love and reassurance, and whimsical illustrations, Welcome Home, Forever Child is sure to be cherished by children and parents alike. While best suited to children ages two to eight, this gem will undoubtedly be enjoyed by older children as well. Most children's adoption books reflect infant adoptions, and may not be appropriate for the older child who spent their early years in foster care or an orphanage. Welcome Home, Forever Child is a much needed book that social workers and therapists will want to recommend to families who adopted their child past the age of two. The book helps parents reassure children of their permanent place in the new family, and of how much they are wanted and loved. It will also make a very special and meaningful keepsake gift for a child upon joining his or her new family, upon finalizing the adoption, or upon the anniversary of either event.
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Welcome Home Little Baby
Lisa Harper
Based on a poem the author wrote immediately after the arrival of their first adopted child, this story is perfect for anyone who has adopted or is going to adopt.
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Welcome to Bordertown
Holly Black and Ellen Kushner
Stories and poems set in the urban land of Bordertown, a city on the edge of the faerie and human world, populated by human and elfin runaways.
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Welcome to the Family
Mary Hoffman
Introduces different types of households and discusses families with children, adoption, foster parents, same-sex parents, and fertility treatments.
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We're All Wonders
R. J. Palacio
Augie enjoys the company of his dog, Daisy, and using his imagination, but painfully endures the taunts of his peers because of his facial deformity.
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We See the Moon
Carrie A. Kitze
A story written from the children's perspective, asking the questions that dwell in their hearts about their birthparents. It helps children use the moon as a private tool to connect with a family that is always with them in their hearts.
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We the Children
Andrew Clements
Sixth-grader Ben Pratt's life is full of changes that he does not like--his parents' separation and the plan to demolish his seaside school to build an amusement park--but when the school janitor gives him a tarnished coin with some old engravings and then dies, Ben is drawn into an effort to keep the school from being destroyed.
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We Wanted You
Liz Rosenberg
Parents tell how they waited and prepared for the child that they wanted so much.
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We Were Here
Matt de la Pena
Haunted by the event that sentences him to time in a group home, Miguel breaks out with two unlikely companions and together they begin their journey down the California coast hoping to get to Mexico and a new life.
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Whale Talk
Chris Crutcher
Intellectually and athletically gifted, TJ, a multiracial, adopted teenager, shuns organized sports and the gung-ho athletes at his high school until he agrees to form a swimming team and recruits some of the school's less popular students.
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What a Beautiful Morning
Arthur A. Levine
When his grandpa seems to have forgotten how to do the things that they love, Noah's grandma steps in, while Noah tries to find something he can share with his grandpa.
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What are Parents?
Kyme Fox-Lee and Susan Fox-Lee
Playfully rhyming words and beautifully illustrated pictures lead a child through a journey to discovering diversity while learning to accept their unique family.
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What are You?: Voices of Mixed-Race Young People
Pearl Fuyo Gaskins
Many young people of racially mixed backgrounds discuss their feelings about family relationships, prejudice, dating, personal identity, and other issues.
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What Can I Do?: A Book for Children of Divorce
Danielle Lowry
A young girl tries everything she can think of to keep her parents from getting a divorce, but with the help of her school counselor, she comes to realize that the divorce is not her fault.
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What Can You Do with Two Mommies?
Tara Theresa Hill
Annie is a little girl growing up in a house with two Mommies and a big, orange cat named Pumpkin. Annie has always had two Mommies. But when Annie's new best friend, Emily, starts asking why she doesn't have a Daddy, Annie starts wondering if her parents are different from other kids' parents. As Annie talks to Emily about her life with Mommy Susan and Mommy Sharon, they both discover that in the end, it is love that makes a family.
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What Comes After
Steve Watkins
When her veterinarian father dies, sixteen-year-old Iris Wight must move from Maine to North Carolina where her Aunt Sue spends Iris's small inheritance while abusing her physically and emotionally, but the hardest to take is her mistreatment of the farm animals.
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What Do I Say About That?
Julia Cook
This book takes a unique look at the internal struggles with which a child of an incarcerated parent is faced.
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Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?
Kathleen Collins
Now available in Ecco's Art of the Story series: a never-before-published collection of stories from a brilliant yet little known African American artist and filmmaker-a contemporary of revered writers including Toni Cade Bambara, Laurie Colwin, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Grace Paley-whose prescient work has recently resurfaced to wide acclaim. Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins's stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues-race, gender, family, and sexuality-that shape the ordinary moments in our lives. In "The Uncle," a young girl who idolizes her handsome uncle and his beautiful wife makes a haunting discovery about their lives. In "Only Once," a woman reminisces about her charming daredevil of a lover and his ultimate-and final-act of foolishness. Collins's work seamlessly integrates the African-American experience in her characters' lives, creating rich, devastatingly familiar, full-bodied men, women, and children who transcend the symbolic, penetrating both the reader's head and heart. Both contemporary and timeless, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love' is a major addition to the literary canon, and is sure to earn Kathleen Collins the widespread recognition she is long overdue.
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What Happened to Goodbye
Sarah Dessen
Following her parents' bitter divorce as she and her father move from town to town, seventeen-year-old Mclean reinvents herself at each school she attends until she is no longer sure she knows who she is or where she belongs.
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What Hearts
Bruce Brooks
After his mother divorces his father and remarries, Asa's sharp intellect and capacity for forgiveness help him deal with the instabilities of his new world.
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What If It's Us
Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera
Told in two voices, when Arthur, a summer intern from Georgia, and Ben, a native New Yorker, meet it seems like fate, but after three attempts at dating fail they wonder if the universe is pushing them together or apart.
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What if the Zebras Lost Their Stripes?
John Reitano
If the zebras lost their stripes and became different from one another, some white and some black, would they turn and fight each other and stop living life as loving friends?
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What is a Family? A Question & Answer Book
Tamia Sheldon
Featuring Waldorf-style illustrations and depictions of families of all shapes, sizes and colors, this book gets kids talking about their own families while opening their eyes to the fact that even though families don't always look the same, they all share one special thing: love.
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What is Jail, Mommy?
Jackie A. Stanglin
A mother explains to her young daughter why the girl's father is in prison and what his life is like as an inmate.
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What is Real
Karen Rivers
Dex Pratt's life has been turned upside down: his parents have divorced, his mother has remarried, and his father attempts suicide and fails. Dex returns to their small town to care for him. However, he isn't prepared for his father's grow-op or his rotting rented house.