Browse Diverse Families by Subject:
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Backwards Day
S. Bear Berman
For one day every year on the planet Tenalp, everything is backwards. Everything. So why didn't Andrea turn into a boy on Backwards Day this year? And why did she turn into a boy the very next day?
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Bait
Alex Sanchez
Diego keeps getting into trouble because of his explosive temper until he finally finds a probation officer who helps him get to the root of his anger so that he can stop running from his past.
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Ballerino Nate
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
After seeing a ballet performance, Nate decides he wants to learn ballet but he has doubts when his brother Ben tells him that only girls can be ballerinas.
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Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope
Nikki Grimes
When David asks his mother about the man on television, she tells him the story of Barack Obama, discussing his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, his parents' divorce, and his desire to help others.
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Bat 6
Virginia Euwer Wolff
In small town, post-World War Oregon, twenty-one sixth-grade girls recount the story of an annual softball game, during which one girl's bigotry comes to the surface. Set in a small Oregon town just after World War II, this is the powerful tale of a community shattered by its reaction to two young newcomers, Aki and Shazam. Told from 21 different points of view, "Bat 6" explores the subject of Japanese-American racial prejudice after the war. A Japanese American girl who has just spent 6 years in an internment camp meets a bitter girl whose father was killed in Pearl Harbor, and the two become rivals in baseball in this story narrated by the members of the opposing teams.
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Beast
Brie Spangler
After falling off the roof, fifteen-year-old misfit Dylan must attend a therapy group for self-harmers where he meets Jamie, a beautiful and amazing person he does not know is transgender.
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Beautiful Music for Ugly Children
Kristin Cronn-Mills
Gabe has always identified as a boy, but he was born with a girl's body. With his new public access radio show gaining in popularity, Gabe struggles with romance, friendships, and parents--all while trying to come out as transgendered. An audition for a station in Minneapolis looks like his ticket to a better life in the big city. But his entire future is threatened when several violent guys find out Gabe, the popular DJ, is also Elizabeth from school.
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Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability
Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, and Michael Northen
Beauty is a verb is the first of its kind: a high-quality anthology of poetry by American poets with physical disabilities. Poems and essays alike consider how poetry, coupled with the experience of disability, speaks to the poetics of each poet included. The collection explores first the precursors whose poems had a complex (and sometimes absent) relationship with disability, such as Vassar Miller, Larry Eigner, and Josephine Miles. It continues with poets who have generated the Crip Poetics Movement, such as Petra Kuppers, Kenny Fries, and Jim Ferris. Finally, the collection explores the work of poets who don't necessarily subscribe to the identity of "crip-poetics" and have never before been published in this exact context. These poets include Bernadette Mayer, Rusty Morrison, Cynthia Hogue, and C.S. Giscombe. The book crosses poetry movements--from narrative to language poetry--and speaks to and about a number of disabilities including cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, multiple sclerosis, and aphasia due to stroke, among others.
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Beauty Queens
Libba Bray
The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream Pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner. What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program - or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan - or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?
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Because I Am Furniture
Thalia Chaltas
The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both relieved and neglected that her father abuses her brother and sister but ignores her, but when she catches him with one of her friends, she finally becomes angry enough to take action.
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Becoming Chloe
Catherine Ryan Hyde
A gay teenage boy and a fragile teenage girl meet while living on the streets of New York City and eventually decide to take a road trip across America to discover whether or not the world is a beautiful place.
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Bedtime for Baby Teddy
Tamara Arc-Dekker
Created for babies and young children, this happy and simple bedtime storybook reflects the familiar nighttime activities and routines of children and their lesbian parents. With basic text and gentle images this book offers a cozy story time moment for both children and mothers.
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Been Here All Along
Sandy Hall
Gideon always has a plan. His plans include running for class president, leading the yearbook committee, and having his choice of colleges. They do not include falling head over heels for his best friend and next-door neighbor, Kyle. It's a distraction. It's pointless, as Kyle is already dating the gorgeous and popular head cheerleader, Ruby. And Gideon doesn't know what to do. Kyle finally feels like he has a handle on life. He has a wonderful girlfriend, a best friend willing to debate the finer points of Lord of the Rings, and social acceptance as captain of the basketball team. Then both Ruby and Gideon start acting really weird, just as his spot on the team is threatened, and Kyle can't quite figure out what he did wrong.
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Beginnings: How Families Come to Be
Virginia Kroll
Parents and children discuss how their families came to be, covering birth families, adoptive families, two-parent families, and single parent families.
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Behind You
Jacqueline Woodson
After fifteen-year-old Jeremiah is mistakenly shot by police, the people who love him struggle to cope with their loss as they recall his life and death, unaware that 'Miah is watching over them.
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Being Adopted
Maxine Rosenberg
Several young children recount their experiences as adopted members of their families.
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Being Emily
Rachel Gold
They say that whoever you are it's okay, you were born that way. Those words don't comfort Emily, because she was born Christopher and her insides know that her outsides are all wrong. They say that it gets better, be who are you and it'll be fine. For Emily, telling her parents who she really is means a therapist who insists Christopher is normal and Emily is sick. Telling her girlfriend means lectures about how God doesn't make that kind of mistake. Emily desperately wants high school in her small Minnesota town to get better. She wants to be the woman she knows is inside, but it's not until a substitute therapist and a girl named Natalie come into her life that she believes she has a chance of actually Being Emily. A story for anyone who has ever felt that the inside and outside don't match and no one else will understand
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Being Jazz: My Life as a Transgender Teen
Jazz Jennings
Teen activist and trailblazer Jazz Jennings--named one of "The 25 most influential teens" of the year by Time--shares her very public transgender journey, as she inspires people to accept the differences in others while they embrace their own truths.
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Belinda's Bouquet
Lesléa Newman
Belinda's best friend Daniel, and Daniel's two mothers, help her to accept her body shape.
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Belle Prater's Boy
Ruth White
When Woodrow's mother suddenly disappears, he moves to his grandparents' home in a small Virginia town where he befriends his cousin and together they find the strength to face the terrible losses and fears in their lives. Everyone in Coal Station, Virginia, has a theory about what happened to Belle Prater, but twelve-year-old Gypsy wants the facts, and when her cousin Woodrow, Aunt Belle's son moves next door, she has her chance.
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Ben and the Sudden Too-Big Family
Colby Rodowsky
Until now, ten-year-old Ben has believed that life is made up of "all right" and "not all right" stuff, but when his father remarries and the couple adopts a Chinese baby, he wonders which kind of stuff will prevail.
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Beneath My Mother's Feet
Amjed Qamar
When her father is injured, fourteen-year-old Nazia is pulled away from school, her friends, and her preparations for an arranged marriage, to help her mother clean houses in a wealthy part of Karachi, Pakistan, where she finally rebels against the destiny that is planned for her.
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Benji, the Bad Day, and Me
Sally J. Pla
Nothing seems to be going right for Sammy today. At school, he got in trouble for kicking a fence, then the cafeteria ran out of pizza for lunch. After he walks home in the pouring rain, he finds his autistic little brother Benji is having a bad day too. On days like this, Benji has a special play-box where he goes to feel cozy and safe. Sammy doesn't have a special place, and he's convinced no one cares how he feels or even notices him. But somebody is noticing, and may just have an idea on how to help Sammy feel better.
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Benny Doesn't Like to Be Hugged
Zetta Elliott
A little girl uses rhyming verse to describe the unique traits of her autistic friend. Benny likes trains and cupcakes without sprinkles, but he can also be fussy sometimes. The narrator doesn’t mind, however, because “true friends accept each other just the way they are.” A gentle story encouraging children to appreciate and accept our differences.
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Ben's Family (All Kinds of Families)
Elliot Riley
Easy reader introduces a young baseball player and his mother, highlighting their family dynamics and celebrating diversity.