Tag Archives: multicultural families

Multicultural Families

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Whether you are interested in researching children’s literature on multicultural families or using these sources with your own family, literature can be used to examine current representations of families and to teach kids about the diversity of families. In 2005 the ESSL posted a guide to finding children’s books about interracial families, including a short list of sample titles, which may also be useful. Additional resources include the Cooperative Children’s Book Center’s guides to Recommended Picture Books Featuring Interracial Families, 50 Multicultural Books Every Child Should Know, 40 Books About Family, and Gay and Lesbian Themes and Topics in Selected Children’s and Young Adult Books. The CCBC is a research library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Bibliographies and Reference Sources

East, Kathy and Thomas, Rebecca.
Across Cultures: a Guide to Multicultural Literature for Children. 2007.
This bibliography looks at all areas of multicultural literature for children. There is a specific section on families, friends, and neighborhoods.
[Education 011.62 Ea773]

Emery, Francenia L. (ed).
That’s me! That’s you! That’s us! Selected current multicultural books for children and young adults presenting positive, empowering images. 2002.
Includes bibliographies on various multicultural topics, including a section on family.
[Education Juvenile Reference S.011.62 Em364t]

Turner-Vorbeck, Tammy and Marsh, Monica Miller (ed).
Other Kinds of Families: Embracing Diversity in Schools. 2008.
This book looks at multicultural families and discusses the need to reconsider how families are represented in school curricula. The chapters on “Hegemonies and ‘Transgressions’ of Family,” “Immigrant Families and Schools,” and “Doing the difficult: schools and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer families” may be particularly helpful. Each chapter also includes a bibliography of referenced books and articles.
[Education 371.192 Ot3]

Multiethnic Families
Fiction

Adoff, Arnold.
Black is Brown is Tan. 1973.
Describes in verse the life of brown-skinned momma, white-skinned daddy, their children, and assorted relatives.
[Education Storage SE. AD71B]

Amado, Elisa.
Cousins. 2004.
A girl deals with having an extended family from different ethnic backgrounds.
[Education Storage S. Am12c]

Bunting, Eve.
Jin Woo. 2001.
Davey is dubious about having a newly adopted brother from Korea, but when he finds out that his parents still love him, he decides that having a baby brother will be fine.
[Education S Collection SE. B886ji]

Carlson, Nancy.
My Family is Forever. 2004.
A young Asian girl recounts how she came to be part of an adoptive Caucasian family.
[Education S Collection SE. C197my]

Cheng, Andrea.
Grandfather Counts. 2000.
When her maternal grandfather comes from China, Helen, who is biracial, develops a special bond with him despite their age and language differences.
[Education S Collection SE. C4212g]

Cox, Judy.
My Family Plays Music. 2003.
A multiracial musical family with talents for playing a variety of instruments enjoys getting together to celebrate. Each member of the family introduces his/herself, the instrument, and kind of music played.
[Education S Collection Q. SE. C839m]

Davol, Marguerite.
Black, White, Just Right! 2003.
A girl explains how her parents are different in color, tastes in art and food, and pet preferences, and how she herself is different too but just right.
[Education Storage SE.D311B]

Friedman, Ina R.
How My Parents Learned to Eat. 1984.
An American sailor courts a Japanese girl and each tries, in secret, to learn the other’s way of eating.
[Education Storage SE.F9142H]

Goble, Paul.
Buffalo Woman. 1984.
A young hunter marries a female buffalo in the form of a beautiful maiden, but when his people reject her he must pass several tests before being allowed to join the buffalo nation.
[Education S Collection S.398.2 G538B]

Hallinan, P. K.
A Rainbow of Friends. 1997.
A story in verse about how all friends are special and valuable regardless of differences or difficulties, and about how everyone is part of one big family.
[Education Storage SE. H156r1997]

Iyengar, Malathi Michelle.
Romina’s Rangoli. 2007.
When her teacher asks each student to bring in something reflecting his or her heritage to display at an open house, Romina struggles over how to represent both her father’s Indian culture and her mother’s Mexican one.
[Education S Collection SE. Iy1r]

Keller, Holly.
Horace. 1994.
Horace, an adopted child, realizes that being part of a family depends on how you feel and not how you look.
[Education Storage SE. K282HO1994]

Monk, Isabell.
Hope. 1999.
During a visit with her great-aunt, a young girl learns the story behind her name and learns to feel proud of her biracial heritage.
[Education S Collection SE. M7491h]

Wing, Natasha.
Jalapeno Bagels. 1996.
For International Day at school, Pablo, who comes from a racially mixed family, wants to bring something that reflects the cultures of both his parents.
[Education S Collection SE. W7262j]

Multiethnic Families
Non-fiction

Kindersley, Barnabas.
Children Just Like Me. 1995.
Photographs and text depict the homes, schools, family life, and culture of young people around the world.
[Education Storage Q. S.779.925 C796C]

Kuklin, Susan.
Families. 2006.
Children from diverse families share thoughts about their families and photographs.
[Center for Children’s Books Q. S.306.85 K958f]

Kuklin, Susan.
How My Family Lives in America. 1992.
African-American, Asian-American, and Hispanic-American children describe their families’ cultural traditions.
[Education S Collection Q. S.305.800973 K958H]

Gay and Lesbian Families
Fiction

Brannen, Sarah S.
Uncle Bobby’s Wedding. 2008.
Chloe is jealous and sad when her favorite uncle announces that he will be getting married, but as she gets to know Jamie better and becomes involved in planning the wedding, she discovers that she will always be special to Uncle Bobby–and to Uncle Jamie, too.
[Education S Collection SE. B7352u]

Garden, Nancy.
Molly’s Family. 2004.
While preparing decorations for Open School Night, Molly and several of her classmates draw pictures of their families. Molly is at first hurt when a classmate comments “no one has two mommies,” but she and her classmates discover that family means something different to each of them.
[Education S Collection SE. G167m]

Gonzalez, Rigoberto.
Antonio’s Card. 2005.
With Mother’s Day coming, Antonio finds he has to decide about what is important to him when his classmates make fun of the unusual appearance of his mother’s partner, Leslie. This bilingual book is in English and Spanish.
[Education S Collection and Education Storage Q. SE. G589a]

Haan, Linda de.
King & King. 2002.
When the queen insists that the prince get married and take over as king, the search for a suitable mate does not turn out as expected.
[Education S Collection SE. H111k]

Polacco, Patricia.
In Our Mothers’ House. 2009.
Three young multiracial children experience the joys and challenges of being raised by two mothers.
[Center for Children’s Books Q. SE. P756in]

Richardson, Justin.
And Tango Makes Three. 2005.
At New York City’s Central Park Zoo, two male penguins fall in love and start a family by taking turns sitting on an abandoned egg until it hatches.
[Education S Collection Q. SE. R394t]

Vigna, Judith.
My Two Uncles. 1995.
Elly’s grandfather has trouble accepting the fact that his son is gay.
[Education S Collection SE.V683MY]

Willhoite, Michael.
Daddy’s Roommate. 2000.
A young boy discusses his divorced father’s new living situation, in which the father and his gay roommate share eating, doing chores, playing, loving, and living.
[Education S Collection SE. W669d2000]

Disabilities
Fiction

Altman, Alexandra.
Waiting for Benjamin. 2008.
Alexander experiences feelings of disappointment, anger, embarrassment, and jealousy when his younger brother is diagnosed with autism.
[Education S Collection SE. Al797w]

Chaconas, Dori.
Dancing with Katya. 2006.
In the late 1920s, Anna tries to help her younger sister Katya regain her strength and joy in life after she becomes crippled by polio.
[Education Storage Q. SE. C344d]

Emmons, Chip.
Sammy Wakes His Dad. 2000.
Sammy’s father, who is in a wheelchair, is reluctant to join Sammy in going fishing, until his son’s love finally moves him to action.
[Education Storage SE. Em67s]

Glenn, Sharlee Mullins.
Keeping Up with Roo. 2004.
Gracie has always had a special bond with her Aunt Roo, who is mentally disabled, but that relationship starts to change when Gracie begins school.
[Education S Collection SE. G487k]

Millman, Isaac.
Moses Goes to the Circus. 2003.
Moses, who is deaf, has a good time with his family at the circus, where they communicate using sign language. Includes illustrations of some of the signs they use.
[Education S Collection SE. M623m]

Stuve-Bodeen, Stephanie.
We’ll Paint the Octopus Red. 1998.
Emma and her father discuss what they will do when the new baby arrives, but they adjust their expectations when he is born with Down syndrome.
[Education S Collection Q. SE. St98w]

Books about Adoption

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Adoption is often a difficult subject to discuss with children. Picture books can be used to explain the concept to younger children and novels for older readers are helpful in showing the universality of family life. The following books explore international adoption, fitting into a new family, and making contact with birth parents.
Picture Books
Bunting, Eve
Jin Woo. 2001.
Davey is dubious about having a new adopted brother from Korea, but when he finds out that his parents still love him, he decides that having a baby brother will be fine.
[Education S Collection: SE. B886ji]

Carlson, Nancy.
My Family Is Forever. 2004.
A young girl recounts how she came to be part of an adoptive family.
[Education S Collection: SE. C197my]

Curtis, Jamie Lee
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born. 1996.
A young girl asks her parents to tell her again the cherished family story of her birth and adoption.
[Education Storage: SE. C944t]

Lewis, Rose A.
Every Year on Your Birthday. 2007.
Each year on the birthday of her adopted Chinese daughter, a mother recalls the moments they have shared, from the first toy to the friends left behind in China.
[Education S Collection: SE. L5852e]

Parr, Todd.
We Belong Together: a Book About Adoption and Families. 2007.
Aimed at young children, this book celebrates the variety of families touched by adoption.
Education S Collection: SE. P246w

Thomas, Eliza
The Red Blanket. 2004.
Tells the story of a single woman who goes to China to adopt a baby.
[Education S Collection: SE. T362r]

Turner, Anne Warren
Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies. 1989.
A boy who came from far away to be adopted by a couple in this country remembers how unfamiliar and frightening some of the things were in his new home, before he accepted the love to be found there.
[Education Storage: SE. T851T]
Middle Grades
Caldwell, V.M.
Tides. 2001.
While spending the summer with her new siblings and cousins at their grandmother’s house by the ocean, Elizabeth begins to feel that she belongs to her adoptive family.
[Education Remote Storage: S.C1271t]

Cummings, Priscilla
Saving Grace. 2003.
“After her family is evicted from their Washington, D.C., home in 1932, eleven-year-old Grace is sent to a mission and taken in by a well-off family who wants to adopt her.” — Description from the Horn Book Guide
[Education S Collection: S.C9124s]

Hicks, Betty
Get Real. 2006.
Destiny, a thirteen-year-old control freak who feels alienated in her messy, haphazard family, helps her adopted best friend when she finds her birth mother and decides to have a relationship with her.
[Center for Children’s Books: S. H529g]

Johnson, Angela
Heaven. 1998.
Fourteen-year-old Marley’s seemingly perfect life in the small town of Heaven is disrupted when she discovers that her father and mother are not her real parents.
[Education S Collection: S. J6313h]

Little, Jean
Emma’s Yucky Brother. 2000.
Emma finds out how hard it is to be a big sister when her family adopts a four-year-old boy named Max.
[Center for Children’s Books: S.L724e]

McKay, Hilary
Saffy’s Angel. 2002.
After learning that she was adopted, thirteen-year-old Saffron’s relationship with her eccentric, artistic family changes, until they help her go back to Italy where she was born to find a special memento of her past.
[Education Storage: S.M1922s]
Young Adult
Alvarez, Julia
Finding Miracles. 2004.
Fifteen-year-old Milly Kaufman is an average American teenager until Pablo, a new student at her school, inspires her to search for her birth family in his native country.
[Center for Children’s Books: S. Al866f]

Kearney, Meg.
The Secret of Me. 2005
While trying to find her place within her adoptive family and within the wider world, fourteen-year-old Lizzie reveals her secret wishes and fears in a collection of blues poems, list poems, sonnets, sestinas, and free verse.
[Center for Children’s Books: S. K214s]

Leavitt, Caroline.
Girls in Trouble. 2004.
Abandoned by her boyfriend and at odds with her parents for choosing open adoption, Sara, a sixteen-year-old honor student, is sustained by her relationship with her daughter’s adoptive parents until they become threatened by her increasing obsession with the baby and make a decision that has devastating consequences for everyone. (For mature readers)
[Main Stacks: 813 L489g]

Lowry, Lois
Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye. 1978.
Seemingly a girl who has everything, Natalie, at seventeen, goes in pursuit of her birth mother.
[Education Remote Storage: S.L9551f]

Pennebaker, Ruth
Don’t Think Twice. 1996.
Seventeen years old and pregnant, Anne lives with other unwed mothers in a group home in rural Texas where she learns to be herself before giving her child up for adoption.
[Education Storage: S. P381d]

Reinhardt, Dana.
A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life. 2006.
Sixteen-year-old atheist Simone Turner-Bloom’s life changes in unexpected ways when her parents convince her to make contact with her biological mother, an agnostic from a Jewish family who is losing her battle with cancer.
[Education S Collection: S. R275b]

Children’s Books – Interracial Families

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Finding children’s books about interracial families:

This guide suggests four ways to find children’s books about interracial families. Interracial families include those where family members have differing ethnicities due to adoption, and those in which the biological mother and father have different ethnic backgrounds.You can search for book titles in

a) the library online catalog
b) bibliographies
c) the NoveList database
d) the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD).

a) Search the library online catalog

Tip 1: Use “juvenile” as a subject word to restrict your search to children’s books
OR
Tip 2: Use “Search Limits” (click on the button that says “more limits” to get to the limiting page) to restrict your search within children’s books.There are cases where children’s books don’t have the word “juvenile” assigned to their catalog records. In order not to miss these books, you can use “Search Limits” as an alternative approach. Hold the “Ctrl” key, and in the “Location” box, click:

• Center for Children’s Books
• Education & Social Science
• University High School

The majority of the University Library’s children’s literature is kept in these three libraries, though not all books in the Education Library are children’s books.

Tip 3: After either putting “juvenile” in the subject field as directed in Tip 1, or limiting your search as directed in Tip 2, use the following subject terms in the Guided Keyword Search.
• Interracial marriage
• Interracial adoption
• Intercountry adoption
• Racially mixed children
• Racially mixed people

If following Tip 1: you can try these separately (in different searches) in the second subject line.

If following Tip 2: You can put at least three of them in separate boxes and “OR” them together.

Tip 4: Use specific words for regions, ethnic groups, etc.There are cases where books about racially mixed families don’t get the above subject terms assigned to their catalog records. In order not to miss these books, you can use more specific words to dig some of them out – use these strategies in combination with either Tip 1 or Tip 2.

Example: adopt? Korea? – all of these – Any Words
Example: adopt? – all of these – Any Words ANDChina Chinese – any of these – Any Words)

b) Locate book titles in bibliographies

The following web site: http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/edkclass.htm#gen was developed by the Education and Social Science Library (ESSL) and provides references to books that enable the search of children’s books by topic. For example:

• That’s me! That’s you! That’s us! : selected current multicultural books for children and young adults presenting positive, empowering images, 5th ed.Call No.: S.011.62 Em364tLocation: Education Juvenile Reference

• A to zoo : subject access to children’s picture books (6th ed.)Call No.: S.011.62 L628a2001;Location: Education Juvenile Reference & LIS Library

• Best books for children : preschool through grade 6 (7th ed.)Call No.: S.011.62 G412b2002; S.011.62 G412b2003(supplement)Location: Education Juvenile Reference

• Multicultural literature for children and young adults : a selected listing of books by and about people of color. V. 2 (1st ed.)Call No.: Q.S. 011.62 K945mLocation: Education Juvenile Reference & Education Storage

• Kaleidoscope : a multicultural booklist for grades K-8Call No.: S.016.3058 K1242003Location: Education Juvenile Reference & Center for Childrens Books

• Adoption literature for children and young adults : an annotated bibliography Call No.: S. 016.362734 M597ALocation: Education Juvenile ReferenceYou can use their subject indexes and look for book titles listed under such terms as “Interracial families,” “Interracial marriages” or “Marriage, interracial,” “Biracial children,” “adoption,” etc.

• Children’s interracial fiction : an unselective bibliography. 1969. 124p.Call No.: S. 016.813 G458CLocation: Education Remote Storage (For those who want to do historical research, this may be worth a look.)

c) Search the NoveList database

NoveList, which is accessible through the “Online Research Resources” page, is a fiction database that provides subject heading access, reviews, annotations, etc. for fiction books for all ages. Go to the “New Search” page and click on “Boolean Search.” You can search fiction titles by subject terms or keywords. This page also offers a convenient way for you to define age range of the books you are looking for.To browse subject terms this database uses on books about interracial families, go to the “New Search” page and click on “All Authors, Titles, Series Names and Subjects.”

d) Search the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD)

The useful thing about CLCD is that it offers quick access to book reviews, as well as easy ways to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction, and to define age and grade level of the books you are looking for.“Interracial marriage,” “Interracial adoption,” “Intercountry adoption” are all good terms to use here. You can also try specific words that relate to regions and ethic groups in your search.

• To conduct a broad search, choose the default “singular and plural forms” and search within “All Fields;”

• To do a narrow search, choose “exact phrase” or “exact words” and search within “Subject Hdgs.”First-time users of the database can consult the tutorial document at http://clcd.odyssi.com/member/chelp2.htm for more guidance.

Finally, here are a few sample titles of children’s books in the University Library, fiction or non-fiction, concerning interracial families:

1. An Mei’s strange and wondrous journey / by Stephan Molnar-Fenton. 1998. 1v.[Call No.: SE. M7381a, Education S Collection]

2. Black is brown is tan / by Arnold Adoff. 1973. 31p.[Call No.: SE. AD71B, CCB & Education Storage]

3. Black, white, just right / Marguerite W. Davol. 1993. unpaged.[Call No.: SE. D311B, Education Storage]

4. Interracial marriages / by Paul Almonte and Theresa Desmond. c1992. 47 p.[Call No.: S. 306.846 AL68F, Education Storage]

5. Living in two worlds / by Maxine B. Rosenberg. c1986. 46 p.[Call No.: S. 306.846 R723L, CCB & Education Storage]

6. Loving v. Virginia : interracial marriage / Karen Alonso. c2000. 112 p.[Call No.: S.346.73016 Al72l, Education S Collection]

7. Mommy far, Mommy near : an adoption story / written by Carol Antoinette Peacock. 2000. 1v. [Call No.: S.P3131m 2000, Education S Collection]

8. The rainbow effect : interracial families / Kathlyn Gay. 1987. 141 p.[Call No.: 306.846 G252R, Main Stacks]

9. Trevor’s story : growing up biracial / Bethany Kandel. c1997. 40 p.[Call No.: S. 306.846 K131T, Education Storage]

10. Two Mrs. Gibsons / story by Toyomi Igus. 1996. 30p.[Call No.: SE. Ig8t, CCB & Education S Collection]

11. We adopted you, Benjamin Koo / Linda Walvoord Girard. 1989. 32p.[Call No.: S. 362.734 G441W, Education Remote Storage]

12. We don’t look like our Mom and Dad / by Harriet Langsam Sobol. 1984. 32p.[Call No.: S.362.7340973 So12w, Education Remote Storage]