The Check-in!

From New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist Traci Chee comes a Japanese-influenced fantasy brimming with demons, adventure, and plans gone awry.

In the realm of Awara, where gods, monsters, and humans exist side by side, Miuko is an ordinary girl resigned to a safe, if uneventful, existence as an innkeeper’s daughter.

But when Miuko is cursed and begins to transform into a demon with a deadly touch, she embarks on a quest to reverse the curse and return to her normal life. Aided by a thieving magpie spirit and continuously thwarted by a demon prince, Miuko must outfox tricksters, escape demon hunters, and negotiate with feral gods if she wants to make it home again.

Call number: FIC CHE

Genre: YA Fiction, Folklore, Romance

Reading level: 6-9

Length: 384 pages

Availability: MHHS

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievements: Fiction

In this young adult novel by award-winning author Anna-Marie McLemore, two non-binary teens are pulled into a magical world under a lake - but can they keep their worlds above water intact?

Everyone who lives near the lake knows the stories about the world underneath it, an ethereal landscape rumored to be half-air, half-water. But Bastián Silvano and Lore Garcia are the only ones who’ve been there. Bastián grew up both above the lake and in the otherworldly space beneath it. Lore’s only seen the world under the lake once, but that one encounter changed their life and their fate.

Call number: FIC McL

Genre: YA Fiction, Fantasy, LGBTQIA+

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 304 pages

Availability: MHHS

Your Ultimate Visual Guide to the Basics of Finance

Learn how to money in this in-depth, illustrated guide from New York Times bestselling author and financial expert Jean Chatzky, Kathryn Tuggle, and the team at HerMoney

There’s no getting around it. You need to know how to manage money to know how to manage life ― but most of us don’t! This illustrated guidebook from New York Times bestselling author and financial expert Jean Chatzky, Kathryn Tuggle, and their team at HerMoney breaks down the basics of money―how to earn it, manage it, and use it―giving you all the tools you need to take charge and be fearless with personal finance.

Call number: 332.4 CHA

Genre: YA Nonfiction, Finance, Money

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 256 pages

Availability: MHHS

For fans of Love, Simon and I Wish You All the Best, a funny, honest, messy, completely relatable story of a girl who realizes that love can be found in many ways that don't involve sex or romance.

This is the funny, honest, messy, completely relatable story of Georgia, who doesn't understand why she can't crush and kiss and make out like her friends do. She's surrounded by the narrative that dating + sex = love. It's not until she gets to college that she discovers the A range of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum -- coming to understand herself as asexual/aromantic.

Disrupting the narrative that she's been told since birth isn't easy -- there are many mistakes along the way to inviting people into a newly found articulation of an always-known part of your identity. But Georgia's determined to get her life right, with the help of (and despite the major drama of) her friends.

Call number: FIC OSE

Genre: YA Fiction, LGBTQIA+

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 432 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction

Eighteen-year-old Constance is not interested in marriage or in being a "young lady."

But for a young woman coming of age in the early 1800s, that's just about all that's available to her. When her parents arrange her a marriage with a man more than twice her age, she's powerless to resist. Stance couldn't possibly find her newfound husband less appealing, but what can she do?

Four months into the marriage, she can slip out of their bed in the middle of the night, and she can put on his clothes. She can look in the mirror and like what she sees. She can sneak out of the house before dawn and visit the baker's scrawny son, who has just been drafted into the army, and offer to take his place. Vive l'Empereur!

Call number: FIC RIJ

Genre: YA Fiction, Action/Adventure

Reading level: 7-12

Length: 368 pages

Availability: MHHS

From Title IX to World Titles

Fifty years ago, US president Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law, making it illegal for federally funded education programs to discriminate based on sex. The law set into motion a massive boom in girls and women’s sports teams, from kindergarten to the collegiate level. Professional women’s sports grew in turn. Title IX became a massive touchstone in the fight for gender equality. So why do girls and women—including trans and intersex women—continue to face sexist attitudes and unfair rules and regulations in sports?

Call number: 796.082 CRO

Genre: Nonfiction, Gender, Sports

Reading level: 8-12

Length: 120 pages

Availability: MHHS

A remarkable YA love story between two Aboriginal boys -- one who doesn’t want to accept he’s gay, and the boy who comes to live in his house who makes him realize who he is.

It's a hot summer, and life's going all right for Jackson and his family on the Mish. It's almost Christmas, school's out, and he's hanging with his mates, teasing the visiting tourists, avoiding the racist boys in town. Just like every year, Jackson's Aunty and annoying little cousins visit from the city -- but this time a mysterious boy with a troubled past comes with them.

As their friendship evolves, Jackson must confront the changing shapes of his relationships with his friends, family and community. And he must face his darkest secret -- a secret he thought he'd locked away for good.

Call number: FIC OWE

Genre: YA Fiction, Romance, LGBTQIA+

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 256 pages

Availability: MHHS

From critically acclaimed Shaun David Hutchinson comes a gritty and raw portrayal of the oftentimes traumatic experience of growing up.

Virgil Knox was attacked by a monster.

Of course, no one in Merritt believes him. Not even after he stumbled into the busy town center, bleeding, battered, and bruised, for everyone to see. He’d been drinking, they said. He was hanging out where he wasn’t supposed to, they said. It must’ve been a bear, or a badger, or a gator—definitely no monster.

Virgil doesn’t think it was any of those things. He’s positive it was a monster. But being the new kid in a town where everybody knows everybody is hard enough as it is without being the kid who’s afraid of monsters, so he tries to keep a low profile.

Except he knows the monster is still out there. And if he isn’t careful, Virgil’s afraid it’ll come back to finish him off, or worse—that he’ll become one himself.

Call number: FIC HUT

Genre: YA Fiction, Fantasy, Thriller

Reading level: 8-12

Length: 429 pages

Availability: MHHS

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

GRAPHIC NOVEL

A tin man seeks a heart and a high schooler tries to come to terms with the death of her grandmother.

Solar is in her last year of high school and is reeling from the recent death of her grandmother. She has abandoned her plans for the future and fallen in with a bad crowd. Her little brother, Fenn, doesn't understand why she's changed—she doesn't even want to help him build their rocket in the garage anymore.

Campbell is a tin woodsman—a clunky metal man whose sole purpose in life is to chop down trees. He longs for more, however, and decides to seek out a heart, believing that, with one, he will be able to feel things he has never felt before and, therefore, change his life.

GRAPHIC NOVEL

Call number: 741.5 MAD

Genre: YA Graphic Novel

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 224 pages

Availability: MHHS

Courage in a Time of Tyranny

An inspiring coming-of-age story from award-winning author Margarita Engle about a girl falling in love for the first time while finding the courage to protest for women’s right to vote in 1920s Cuba.

Rima dreams of a day when she is free from fear and shame, the way she feels when she’s riding with Las Mambisas. As she seeks her way, Rima forges unexpected friendships with others who long for freedom, especially a handsome young artist named Maceo. Through turbulent times, hope soars, and with it…love.

Call number: FIC ENG

Genre: YA Historical Fiction, Romance

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 208 pages

Availability: MHHS

A mythic love story set in Trinidad, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's radiant debut introduces two unforgettable outsiders brought together by their connection with the dead.

Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, an ancient and sprawling cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both. A masterwork of lush imagination and exuberant storytelling, When We Were Birds is a spellbinding and hopeful novel about inheritance, loss, and love's seismic power to heal.

Call number: FIC BAN

Genre: Fiction, Fantasy

Reading level: 11-12

Length: 304 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievements: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction

GRAPHIC NOVEL

A young girl in middle school will do whatever it takes to meet her favorite author—even if it means joining her school band! A contemporary graphic novel about making your dream come true—and the friends you make along the way.

When Scout learns that her favorite author is doing an exclusive autograph session at the end of the year, she's determined to be there! She officially needs a plan...and when she finds out that her school's band is heading to the same location for their annual trip, an idea takes shape. Being a band kid can't be that hard, right?

GRAPHIC NOVEL

Call number: 741.5 CAN

Genre: YA Graphic Novel

Reading level: 3-7

Length: 272 pages

Availability: MHHS

An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II

Adapted for young adults from the New York Times bestseller, a riveting and true WWII story of a young man--an American tank gunner--who meets his destiny in an iconic armor duel and forges an enduring bond with his enemy.

Shut the hatches. It's time to roll out. You'll find yourself behind enemy lines with Clarence Smoyer and the 3rd Armored Division, the workhorse unit known as "Spearhead," the best in the tank armor ranks.

Call number: 940.54 MAK

Genre: YA US History, Warfare, WWII

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 352 pages

Availability: MHHS