Skyhunter
An adrenaline-laced novel about the lengths one warrior will go to fight for freedom and those she loves. A broken world. An overwhelming evil. A team of warriors ready to strike back.
Talin is a Striker, a member of an elite fighting force that stands as the last defense for Mara, the only free nation in the world, but when a mysterious prisoner is brought from the front to Mara's capital, Talin senses there is more to him than meets the eye.
Call number: FIC LU
Genre: YA Fiction
Reading level: 7-9
Lexile text measure: 870L
Length: 371 pages
Availability: MHHS
Measuring Up
Having just moved to Seattle from Taiwan, twelve-year-old Cici enters a cooking competition to win the chance to see her grandmother again, but she only knows how to cook Taiwanese food.
Measuring Up is an own voices graphic novel debut from Lily LaMotte and Ann Xu! A beautiful story about food, family, and finding your place in the world.
GRAPHIC NOVEL
Call number: 741.5 LaM
Genre: Graphic novel
Reading level: 7-9
Lexile text measure: HL360L
Length: 205 pages
Availability: MHHS
Body Talk
37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy
We all experience the world in a body, but we don’t usually take the time to explore what it really means to have and live within one. Just as every person has a unique personality, every person has a unique body, and every body tells its own story.
In Body Talk, thirty-seven writers, models, actors, musicians, and artists share essays, lists, comics, and illustrations—about everything from size and shape to scoliosis, from eating disorders to cancer, from sexuality and gender identity to the use of makeup as armor. Together, they contribute a broad variety of perspectives on what it’s like to live in their particular bodies—and how their bodies have helped to inform who they are and how they move through the world.
Call number: 306.4 JEN
Genre: Nonfiction/Human body
Reading level: 9-12
Length: 256 pages
Availability: MHHS
A Burning: A Novel
An electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise-to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies-and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India.
Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, but who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. Taut, symphonic, propulsive, and riveting from its opening lines, A Burning has a force of an epic while being so masterfully compressed it can be read in a single sitting.
Call number: FIC MAJ
Genre: Fiction
Reading level: 11-12+
Length: 293 pages
Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)
Sora achievements: Fiction
Foreshadow
Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading and Writing YA
An anthology of thirteen short stories by contemporary young adult authors, ranging from fantasy to the experience of Mexican Americans living in border cities. Each story is followed by an author's note, commentary by one of the editors on such topics as voice, imagery, and mood, and some, with story prompts.
Call number: FIC PAN
Genre: Fiction/Short Stories
Reading level: 9-12
Length: 333 pages
Availability: MHHS
Separate No More: The Long Road to Brown v. Board of Education
Critically acclaimed author Lawrence Goldstone offers an affecting portrait of the road to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, which significantly shaped the United States and effectively ended segregation.
In this thrilling examination of the path to Brown v. Board of Education, Constitutional law scholar Lawrence Goldstone highlights the key trials and players in the fight for integration. Written with a deft hand, this story of social justice will remind readers, young and old, of the momentousness of the segregation hearings.
Call number: 323.119 GOL
Genre: Nonfiction/Civil Rights
Reading level: 9-12
Length: 276 pages
Availability: MHHS
Long Way Down: The Graphic Novel
Jason Reynolds’s Newbery Honor, Printz Honor, and Coretta Scott King Honor–winning, #1 New York Times bestselling novel Long Way Down is now a gripping, galvanizing graphic novel, with haunting artwork by Danica Novgorodoff.
As Will, fifteen, sets out to avenge his brother Shawn's fatal shooting, seven ghosts who knew Shawn board the elevator and reveal truths Will needs to know.
GRAPHIC NOVEL
Call number: 741.5 REYGenre: YA Fiction/Graphic Novel
Reading level: 6-9
Lexile text measure: HL630L
Length: 105 pages
Availability: MHHS
Conspiracy: Nixon. Watergate, and Democracy's Defenders
An exploration of President Nixon's contentious time in office, the Watergate scandal, and the people who helped protect our Constitution.
We know the villain’s story well, but what about the heroes? When the country’s own leader turned his back on the Constitution, who was there to defend it? Conspiracy is about the reporters, prosecutors, judges, justices, members of Congress, and members of the public who supported and defended the Constitution when it needed it most.
Genre: Nonfiction/US History
Reading level: 8-10
Lexile text measure: 1010L
Length: 277 pages
Availability: MHHS
The Daughters of Ys
An Atlantis-like city from Celtic legend is the setting of The Daughters of Ys, a mythical graphic novel fantasy from National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson and artist Jo Rioux.
Ys, city of wealth and wonder, has a history of dark secrets. Queen Malgven used magic to raise the great walls that keep Ys safe from the tumultuous sea. But after the queen's inexplicable death, her daughters drift apart. Rozenn, the heir to the throne, spends her time on the moors communing with wild animals, while Dahut, the youngest, enjoys the splendors of royal life and is eager to take part in palace intrigue.
GRAPHIC NOVEL
Call number: 741.5 ANDGenre: YA Fiction/Graphic Novel
Reading level: 7-10
Length: 208 pages
Availability: MHHS
The Essential Haiku
A collection of haiku and other poems by three Japanese poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Readers have long been fascinated by the brief Japanese poem called the hokku or haiku. The seventeen-syllable form is rooted in a Japanese tradition of close observation of nature, of making poetry from subtle suggestion. Enjoy this collection of works from the three great masters: Matsuo Basho (17th century), Yosa Buson (18th century), and Kobayashi Issa (19th century).
Call number: 865.6 ESS
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 9-12
Length: 329 pages
Availability: MHHS
Paint Me Like I Am
Paint Me Like I Am is a collection of poems by teens who have taken part in writing programs run by a national nonprofit organization called WritersCorps. To read the words of these young people is to hear the diverse voices of teenagers everywhere.
Included are a foreward by acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni, an essay from Kevin Powell, another poet associated with WritersCorps, and writing tips from WritersCorps instructors.
Call number: 811 PAI
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 8-9
Length: 144 pages
Availability: MHHS
Splash! Poems of Our Watery World
More than thirty poems celebrating water in its myriad forms, from the ocean to a droplet of dew.
Water runs through our lives; it is, in fact, essential to all life. And it takes many forms-it can be the liquid that quenches our thirst, the rain that pours from the sky, the juice of a ripe tomato, even a dramatic white tower in a polar landscape.
Call number: 811 LEV
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 7-8
Lexile text measure: 950L
Length: 39 pages
Availability: MHHS
The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children's Poems
This collection showcases the forgotten treasures of American children's poetry.
Featuring some of the best of children's book illustration, this anthology revives not only the classic poems but also the atmosphere of the periods in which they were written and read.
Call number: 811 OXF
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 5-9
Length: 96 pages
Availability: MHHS
Falling Up
A collection of poems by American poet and humorist, Shel Silverstein.
Filled with unforgettable characters like Screamin’ Millie; Allison Beals and her twenty-five eels; Danny O'Dare, the dancin' bear; the Human Balloon; and Headphone Harold, this collection by the celebrated Shel Silverstein will charm young readers and make them want to trip on their shoelaces and fall up too!
Call number: 811 SIL
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 3-5
Length: 171 pages
Availability: MHHS
Falling Hard: 100 Love Poems by Teens
From an acclaimed anthologist comes this unforgettable collection of one hundred poems by teenagers, capturing the vertigo-inducing realm of romantic love.
The poets are straight, gay, lesbian, bi, or transgender. They live next door or across an ocean; they are innocent or experienced; their lyric explorations range from new love to stale love, obsession to ennui, ecstasy to heartbreak, and every nuance in between. Here is a collection to turn to again and again, because life and love keep on changing.
Call number: 811 FRA
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 9-12
Length: 144 pages
Availability: MHHS
Seeing the Blue Between
Advice and Inspiration for Young Poets
How do you write poetry? It’s a question with as many answers as there are poets. Now, in this unprecedented volume, thirty-two internationally renowned poets provide words of wisdom and inspiring examples of their own work for new poets everywhere.
Call number: 811 SEE
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 4-7
Length: 132 pages
Availability: MHHS
Music of a Distant Drum
Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew Poems
This is a collection of 129 poems from the four leading literary traditions of the Middle East, all masterfully translated into English by Bernard Lewis, many for the first time. These poems come from diverse languages and traditions--Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew--and span more than a thousand years. Together they provide a fascinating and unusual window into Middle Eastern history.
Call number: 808.81 MUS
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 9-12
Length: 232 pages
Availability: MHHS
Crossing the Water
Crossing the Water is a 1971 posthumous collection of poetry by Sylvia Plath that was prepared for publication by Ted Hughes.
Sylvia Plath continues to push the envelope between dark and light, between our deep passions and desires that are often in tension with our duty to family and society. Water becomes a metaphor for the surface veneer that many of us carry, but Plath explores how easily this surface can be shaken and disturbed.
Call number: 811 PLA
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 9-12
Length: 64 pages
Availability: MHHS
I, Too, Sing America
Three Centuries of African American Poetry
Powerful and diverse, this unique collection of African American poetry spans three centuries of writing in America. Poets bare their souls, speak their minds, trace their roots, and proclaim their dreams in the thirty-six poems compiled here.
Call number: 811 I
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 5-7
Length: 128 pages
Availability: MHHS
For Every One
Originally performed at the Kennedy Center for the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and later as a tribute to Walter Dean Myers, this stirring and inspirational poem is a rallying cry to the young dreamers of the world.
For Every One is exactly that: for every one. For every one person. For every one who has a dream. But especially for every kid. The kids who dream of being better than they are. Kids who dream of doing more than they almost dare to imagine.
Call number: 811 REY
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 7-9
Length: 112 pages
Availability: MHHS
A Kick in the Head
An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms
In this splendid and playful volume, an acclaimed creative team presents examples of twenty-nine poetic forms, demonstrating not only the (sometimes bendable) rules of poetry, but also the spirit that brings these forms to life.
Call number: 811 KIC
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 6-7
Length: 61 pages
Availability: MHHS
The Lords and the New Creatures
Jim Morrison’s first published volume of poetry gives a revealing glimpse of an era and the man whose songs and savage performances have left an indelible impression on our culture.
Intense and enigmatic, Jim Morrison’s persona is as riveting now as the lead singer/composer “Lizard King” was during The Doors’ peak in the late sixties. His fast life and mysterious death remain controversial even to this day.
Call number: 811 MOR
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 9-12
Length: 144 pages
Availability: MHHS
American Dragons
Twenty-five Asian American Voices
A well-known Chinese-American writer for young people presents the work of 25 Asian-Americans in this collection of short stories, poems, and one dramatic monologue. The contributors represent various ancestral countries: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and Tibet.
Call number: 810.9 AME
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 7-9
Lexile text measure: 930L
Length: 237 pages
Availability: MHHS
Footprints on the Roof: Poems about the Earth
This provocative collection of poems ranges from such lofty subjects as an astronaut’s view of Earth to the burrows of worms and little creatures within the earth.
Marilyn Singer’s lilting free verse offers visual images that give us fresh new insights and respect for the mighty power of volcanoes, fens, islands, deserts, dunes, and natural disasters.
Call number: 811 SIN
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 5-7
Length: 41 pages
Availability: MHHS
The Ancestors Are Singing
A collection of poems reflecting the culture, customs, daily life, and history of Mexico.
The poems in this tribute to the Mexico of the past and present show that history and modernity don’t always meet in an easy alliance. With respect and passion for the lore and legend of its old civilizations, and concern and hope for the Mexico of today, Tony Johnston takes us from Mexico City to Oaxaca to Chiapas, from the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl to a shoeless boy selling newspapers, in this moving collection exuberantly illustrated by Karen Barbour.
Call number: 811 JOH
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 4-6
Length: 64 pages
Availability: MHHS
Milk and Honey
This NYT bestseller is a collection of poetry and prose about survival, about the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity.
The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. milk and honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.
Call number: 811 KAU
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 11-12
Length: 208 pages
Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL - audiobook only)
Sora achievements: Fiction
Persian Poets
A collection of poems and sonnets from a variety of Persian poets from the Middle Ages.
The Middle Ages saw an extraordinary flowering of Persian poetry, producing remarkable poets--Omar Khayyam, Rumi, Saadi, Sanai, Attar, Hafiz, and Jami. Their works celebrate the beauty of the world in poems about love, humor, wisdom, and mortality.
Call number: 891 PER
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 10-12
Length: 254 pages
Availability: MHHS
Poems for America
125 Poems that Celebrate the American Experience
This collection presents over one hundred poems, composed between the late seventeenth and the twenty-first century, that commemorate the landscapes, institutions, and transforming events in American history.
Call number: 811 POE
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 9-12
Length: 231 pages
Availability: MHHS
You Hear Me?
Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys
In a powerful collection of more than seventy uncensored poems and essays, more than fifty teenage boys from across the country explore their many-layered concerns: identity, love, envy, gratitude, sex, anger, competition, fear, hope. Here, unadorned and without the filter of adult sensibility, is the raw stuff of their lives, in their own words. Isn’t it time to listen?
Call number: 810.8 YOU
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 7-9
Length: 107 pages
Availability: MHHS
The Spider and the Fly
An illustrated version of the well-known poem about a wily spider who preys on the vanity and innocence of a little fly.
"'Will you walk into my parlor,'
said the Spider to the Fly..."
is easily one of the most recognized and quoted first lines in all of English verse. But do you have any idea how the age-old tale of the Spider and the Fly ends?
PICTURE BOOK
Call number: P 821 HOW
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 5-6
Length: 107 pages
Availability: MHHS
The Poetry of Arab Women
A beautiful collection of poems by Arab women throughout history.
Arab women poets work within one of the oldest literary traditions in the world, yet they are virtually unknown in the West. Uniting Arab women poets from the all over the Arab World anti abroad, Nathalie Handal has put together an outstanding collection that introduces poets who write in Arabic, French, English, and Swedish, among them some of the twentieth century's most accomplished poets and today's most exciting new voices.
Call number: 892.7 POE
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 10-12
Length: 355 pages
Availability: MHHS
Girl Coming In for a Landing
A novel in over 100 poems recounting the ups and downs of one adolescent girl's school year.
You walk into class—
my head clears.
No kidding.
You are my aspirin.
One girl. One school year. All poems. From friends to first dates, school dances to family fights, this inspiring collection captures the emotional highs and lows of teen life with refreshing honesty and humor.
Call number: 811 WAY
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 6-7
Lexile text measure: 710L
Length: 144 pages
Availability: MHHS
Under the Breadfruit Tree: Island Poems
An original collection of poetry composed of a series of portraits from the poet's childhood in Jamaica.
The poems present intimate portraits of family and friends, as children see them in happy times and sad times. There are lively characters in moments both poignant and comical, such as Aunt Mae and her breadfruit trees, Stella-Sue walking like a ballerina to market. Here is a book filled with the sights, smells, and sounds of the island, and illustrated with simple yet stunning scratchboard artwork.
Call number: 811 GUN
Genre: Nonfiction/Poetry
Reading level: 4-5
Length: 48 pages
Availability: MHHS
Shyness & Social Anxiety Workbook for Teens
CBT and ACT skills to help you build social confidence.
*Stop worrying about what others think
*Improve your relationships
*Don't let embarrassment get in your way
*Speak with confidence
Call number: 155.5 SHA
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Reading level: 6-12
Length: 136 pages
Availability: MHHS
Zen and the Art of Anything
Simply put, Zen is mindfulness—extracting the most from a given moment.
This book describes the attainment of Zen while breathing and speaking, waking and sleeping, moving and staying, eating and drinking, playing and working, caring and loving, and thriving and surviving.
Call number: 294.3 FRE
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Reading level: 11-12
Length: 170 pages
Availability: MHHS
7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens
This classic book applies the timeless principles of 7 Habits to the tough issues and life-changing decisions teens face.
Imagine you had a roadmap—a step-by-step guide to help you get from where you are now, to where you want to be in the future. Your goals, your dreams, your plans…they’re all within reach. You just need the tools to help you get there.
Call number: 158 COV
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Reading level: 4-5
Lexile text measure: 870L
Length: 268 pages
Availability: MHHS
Happiness
A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill
In this groundbreaking book, Matthieu Ricard makes a passionate case for happiness as a goal that deserves as least as much energy as any other in our lives.
Call number: 294.3 RIC
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Reading level: 11-12
Length: 281 pages
Availability: MHHS
Self-esteem Workbook for Teens
Activities to help you build confidence and achieve your goals.
*Stop putting yourself down
*Accept who you are
*Leave insecurity behind
Call number: 155.5 SCH
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Reading level: 6-12
Length: 183 pages
Availability: MHHS
Mindfulness
Mindfulness reveals a set of simple yet powerful practices that you can incorporate into daily life to help break the cycle of anxiety, stress, unhappiness, and exhaustion. It promotes the kind of happiness and peace that gets into your bones. It seeps into everything you do and helps you meet the worst that life throws at you with courage.
Call number: 616.89 WIL
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Reading level: 11-12
Length: 276 pages
Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL & Serra)
Sora achievements: Nonfiction
The Struggle to Be Strong
True Stories by Teens About Overcoming Tough Times
First-person accounts of teenagers who overcame major life obstacles with insight, independence, relationships, initiative, creativity, humor, and morality.
Call number: 305.23 STR
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Reading level: 7-12
Lexile text measure: 830L
Length: 179 pages
Availability: MHHS
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens
Simple Ways to Keep Your Cool in Stressful Times
In this candid guide to adolescence, Richard Carlson examines the contradictions and challenges unique to teenage life and offers high schoolers (and their parents) tools for learning not to stress about homework, peer pressure, dating, and more. Along the way, he addresses such issues as:
- Breaking up
- Getting out of the emergency lane
- Being OK with your bad hair day
- Dropping the drama
Call number: 158.1 CAR
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Reading level: 7-12
Lexile text measure: 1020L
Length: 242 pages
Availability: MHHS
From Anxiety to Love
A Radical New Approach for Letting Go of Fear and Finding Lasting Peace
In From Anxiety to Love, she shares what she learned and gently guides you through the process, helping you undo anxiety-based thinking and fostering mindful shifts in your thoughts and actions. Whether struggling with everyday stress or near-crippling discomfort, you will find that Corinne’s approach offers a new way of healing from — rather than just coping with — fear and anxiety.
Call number: 152.4 ZUP
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Reading level: 10-12
Length: 187 pages
Availability: MHHS
Think Confident, Be Confident for Teens
A Cognitive Therapy Guide to Overcoming Self-Doubt and Creating Unshakable Self-Esteem
Confidence is like a magnet that attracts people to you and helps you get closer to reaching your goals. When you believe in yourself, you send the message that you have the brains, ability, and talent to handle whatever life sends your way. And the truth is, you do!
Call number: 155.5 FOX
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Reading level: 6-12
Length: 184 pages
Availability: MHHS
Stop, Breathe, Chill
Meditations for a less stressful, more awesome life.
Stop. Breathe. Chill. These mindfulness exercises will teach you how to focus on the present and stop freaking out about the future. Each entry tackles the sort of stuff life throws at you every day. Whether it's a situation with friends, issues with family, or the pressures of school, you'll learn how to live in the moment and stop stressing out.
Call number: 158.1 STE
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help
Reading level: 6-12
Length: 224 pages
Availability: MHHS
Contact the MHHS Library
Email: mhhs.library@smusd.org
Website: missionhillshigh.smusd.org/resources/library
Location: 1 Mission Hills Court, San Marcos, CA, USA
Phone: 760-290-2730