Open a dialogue with the children in your life about the importance of love and acceptance with this Silver Moonbeam Award Winner story celebrating open mindedness, diversity, and the LGBTQIA+ community. Perfect for your family library or a storytime read-aloud for any day of the year. It's love that makes a family. When a boy confides in his friend about bullies saying he doesn't have a real family, he discovers that his friend's parents-a mom and a dad-and his two dads are actually very much alike. Dr. Michael Genhart's debut story is the perfect resource to gently discuss discrimination with kids. This sweet and straightforward story shows that gay families and straight families and everything in between are all different kinds of normal. What makes a family real is the love that is shared. Love Is Love is the book for you if you're looking for: LGBTQ+ books for kids Books about diversity for kids Books about equality for kids

Lily is having a tricky day at school. She is missing her Mum... and Boris Boreham and Trixie Temperton are being mean. Everything is going wrong, and Lily can't wait to get home for the weekend. But...the weekend goes too fast, and Lily has worries about the new school week. Joe has worries too, but luckily Mum and Dad have a clever way of helping the children feel confident and happier. Lily and Joe's parents share a magical way to manage life's tricky situations, using photos, drawing materials, imagination and LOVE! Together they create a special Bubble of Love, and think about what makes them unique, and all the people who love them. As they draw the 'walls' of their Bubbles, Lily and Joe feel safer and stronger... As they think about their special people, they feel absolutely loved. But things don't always go smoothly, and Lily must practice new ways of thinking and being. Watch as the children grow 'brave muscles'. Learn how Lily and Joe grow confidence and ability to deal with tricky people and situations. But above all, experience how the children carry the love of their family wherever they go!

Bestselling author Tony Abbott's YA novel-in-verse is an unflinching and heartbreaking look at a boy's junk-filled life, and the ways he finds redemption and hope, perfect for fans of The Crossover and Long Way Down. Junk. That's what the kids at school call Bobby Lang, mostly because his rundown house looks like a junkyard, but also because they want to put him down. Trying desperately to live under the radar at school-and at the home he shares with his angry, neglectful father-Bobby develops a sort of proud loneliness. The only buffer between him and the uncaring world is his love of the long, wooded trail between school and home. Life grinds along quietly and hopelessly for Bobby until he meets Rachel. Rachel is an artist who sees him in a way no one ever has. Maybe it's because she has her own kind of junk, and a parent who hates what Rachel is: gay. Together the two embark on journeys to clean up the messes that fill their lives, searching against all odds for hope and redemption. Narrated in Bobby's unique voice in arresting free verse, this novel will captivate readers right from its opening lines, urging them on page after page, all the way to its explosive conclusion.

Meet 25 of the bravest humans of all time! Stand Up, Stand Out! is filled with the incredible and inspiring stories of rebel heroes who stood up for what they believed in, spoke out against injustice, and overcame impossible obstacles. Portraits created by hand-picked contemporary illustrators and snappy, compelling text bring these people's achievements vividly to life, and relate their stories back to those of young readers today. From world leaders such as Gandhi and Nelson Mandela to unsung heroes Irena Sendler (who rescued 2,500 children in World War 2) and Juliane Koepcke (who survived an airplane crash in the rainforest aged 17). Each profile concludes with a 'What Can You Do?' section in which the story is related to everyday scenarios children might encounter, and suggests ways for them to show bravery or peacefully protest against injustice.

Dill is a misfit in his small, religious Tennessee town. His dad is in prison for a shocking crime, and his mom is struggling to make ends meet. The only things getting Dill through senior year are his guitar and his fellow outcasts, Travis and Lydia.

Travis is an oddball who finds comfort from his violent home life in an epic fantasy book series. And Lydia is like no one else: fast-talking, creative and fiercely protective. Dill fears his heart will break when she escapes to a better life elsewhere. What Dill needs now is some bravery to tell Lydia how he feels, to go somewhere with his music – and to face the hardest test of all when tragedy strikes.

`An eye-opening and heart-opening book.' -Bonnie Benard, Senior Program Associate, WestEd Identify and promote overlooked strengths to cultivate resilience. Now more than ever, counselors, teachers, community youth workers, and parents are striving to prevent individual and school-wide tragedy before it happens. Critical to the success of their efforts is a deep respect for the adolescent experience. In this book, author and social worker Michael Ungar takes a fresh, hopeful approach to challenging youth by looking beyond the surface of "bad" behaviors to understand them as ways of coping with life's adversities. Strengths-Based Counseling With At-Risk Youth provides the tools both to understand and access strengths buried beneath problem behaviors. It offers specific, effective strategies in working with adolescents to construct positive identities and realistic action plans. Features include Six strategies for youth engagement, covering common problem behaviors such as drug use, violence, delinquency, and promiscuity An entire chapter on bullying An abundance of real-life examples and counseling narratives A Resilient Youth Strengths Inventory to assess resilience and identify areas that need strengthening Sincere application of Ungar's compassionate and open-minded strategies is sure to transform the lives of countless adolescents in need, and the institutions that serve them.

Coauthors Acosta (Little Captain Jack) and Amavisca (Bang Bang I Hurt the Moon) keep their focus tight, concentrating on Ben's feelings and the way the boys' taunting torments him ("He felt even sadder than the day his fish went to fish heaven"). Loose-lined drawings with gently tinted wash by Gusti (Mallko and Dad) underscore the intimacy and loyalty of Ben's family. ~Publishers Weekly This is a story inspired by true events. Ben is a little boy, and he likes painting his nails. There's no big reason to it, he just loves all the amazing colors on the tips of his fingers. Until one day, some of his schoolmates start laughing at him because of it. He suddenly feels sad, helpless, and doesn't want to paint his nails anymore. Even when his father starts painting his nails to support Ben, the helplessness doesn't go away. Why can't boys paint their nails? A tale to understand that a kid's joy has no boundaries. A simple story about a small revolution.

Saints and Misfits-a William C. Morris Award finalist and an Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of the Year-is a "timely and authentic" (School Library Journal, starred review) debut novel that feels like a modern day My So-Called Life...starring a Muslim teen. There are three kinds of people in my world: 1. Saints, those special people moving the world forward. Sometimes you glaze over them. Or, at least, I do. They're in your face so much, you can't see them, like how you can't see your nose. 2. Misfits, people who don't belong. Like me-the way I don't fit into Dad's brand-new family or in the leftover one composed of Mom and my older brother, Mama's-Boy-Muhammad. Also, there's Jeremy and me. Misfits. Because although, alliteratively speaking, Janna and Jeremy sound good together, we don't go together. Same planet, different worlds. But sometimes worlds collide and beautiful things happen, right? 3. Monsters. Well, monsters wearing saint masks, like in Flannery O'Connor's stories. Like the monster at my mosque. People think he's holy, untouchable, but nobody has seen under the mask. Except me.

Fourteen-year-old Emily Prince has just moved to Windsor, Ontario. As if trying to make friends in a new school is not stressful enough, Emily's abusive mother does not care if she ever fits in. Emily is her victim.

With a vanished father and a mother who hates her, it seems there is no one who can rescue Emily from her fate-until she meets her neighbor across the street. Dean Bouche is drop-dead gorgeous and blessed with an intoxicating laugh. Better yet, he attends St. Gervase's Catholic High School, just like her. As Emily and Dean begin a complicated relationship, her secret life is exposed and she discovers that Dean is not who he appears to be. But when all her new friends suddenly become obsessed with the bird-like birthmark she sports on her shoulder and Dean goes missing, Emily suddenly realizes that something is wrong-very wrong.

"Shapeshifter's Mark" is the gripping story of one girl's struggle to overcome abuse as she is unwittingly immersed into a strange new world where she soon discovers the truth about her destiny.

By #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black, the first book in a stunning new series about a mortal girl who finds herself caught in a web of royal faerie intrigue. Of course I want to be like them. They're beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever. And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe. Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King. To win a place at the Court, she must defy him--and face the consequences. In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.