The Check-in!

The Women of the Winningest Team in Pro Football History

Discover the unlikely story of the Toledo Troopers, the winningest team in the National Women's Football League, who won seven league championships in the 1970s—and gain full access to the players and key figures in the organization.

Amid a national backdrop of the call to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the National Women’s Football League was founded as something of a gimmick. However, the league’s star team, the Toledo Troopers, emerged to challenge traditional gender roles and amass a win-loss record never before or since achieved in American football.

Call number: 796.332 GUI

Genre: Nonfiction, Sports, History

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 320 pages

Availability: MHHS

For fans of Elizabeth Wein and Ruta Sepetys, an absorbing, fast-paced YA debut novel from Marina Scott about a girl’s determination to survive during the Nazi siege of Leningrad―and to save her best friend from a horrible fate.

There are some lines that should never be crossed―even in a city ruled by hunger. The black market is Liza’s lifeline, where she barters family heirlooms and steals whatever she can get her hands on just for enough food to survive. Morality, after all, has become a fluid thing since the Nazi siege has cut off her city from the rest of the world. Hope for a quick liberation is obliterated as the Soviet government focuses on sustaining the Red Army and not the city, subjecting its people to unimaginable cruelties at the hands of the secret police.

Call number: FIC SCO

Genre: YA Fiction

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 304 pages

Availability: MHHS

A 2022 National Book Award for Young People's Literature Finalist

On October 16, 1968, during the medal ceremony at the Mexico City Olympics, Tommie Smith, the gold medal winner in the 200-meter sprint, and John Carlos, the bronze medal winner, stood on the podium in black socks and raised their black-gloved fists to protest racial injustice inflicted upon African Americans. Both men were forced to leave the Olympics, received death threats, and faced ostracism and continuing economic hardships.

Call number: 305.8 GRA

Genre: YA Indigenous Philosophy, Human Ecology

Reading level: 8-12

Length: 208 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievements: Nonfiction, Science

A talented witch competes for a prestigious scholarship at her cutthroat high school in this contemporary fantasy for fans of Never Have I Ever and Sabrina the Teen Witch.

Shay Johnson has all the makings of a successful witch. As a junior at T.K. Anderson Magical Magnet School, she’s determined to win the Brockton Scholarship—her ticket into the university of her dreams. Her competition? Ana freaking Álvarez. The key to victory? Impressing Mr. B, drama teacher and head of the scholarship committee. When Mr. B asks Shay to star in this year’s aggressively inclusive musical, she warily agrees, even though she’ll have to put up with Ana playing the other lead. But in rehearsals, Shay realizes Ana is . . . not the despicable witch she’d thought.

Call number: FIC BRO

Genre: YA Fantasy, Romance, LGBTQIA+

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 416 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievements: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction

From Susan Dennard, the New York Times bestselling author of the Witchlands series, comes a haunting and high-octane contemporary fantasy about the magic it takes to face your fears in a nightmare-filled forest and the mettle required to face the secrets hiding in the dark corners of your own family.

Hemlock Falls isn't like other towns. You won't find it on a map, your phone won't work here, and the forest outside town might just kill you.

Winnie Wednesday wants nothing more than to join the Luminaries, the ancient order that protects Winnie's town―and the rest of humanity―from the monsters and nightmares that rise in the forest of Hemlock Falls every night.

Call number: FIC DEN

Genre: YA Fantasy, Romance

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 304 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievements: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction

GRAPHIC NOVEL

How many kids will go missing before this town admits it’s haunted? Find out in this freakily fun new graphic novel series!

Feral has everything a small town should have: Main Street, City Hall, a population just over sixteen thousand . . .
But Feral also has secrets. Mysteries. Unexplained disappearances. In five spooky stories, an intrepid young resident invites readers to look a little closer at this scenic rural town. Are you game to investigate what’s going on in Feral? If you pay attention, you might notice something where it shouldn’t be.

GRAPHIC NOVEL

Call number: 741.5 FEA

Genre: Graphic Novel, Fiction

Reading level: 3-7

Length: 240 pages

Availability: MHHS

GRAPHIC NOVEL

From legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki comes Shuna's Journey, a new manga classic about a prince on a quest for a golden grain that would save his land, never before published in English!

Shuna, the prince of a poor land, watches in despair as his people work themselves to death harvesting the little grain that grows there. And so, when a traveler presents him with a sample of seeds from a mysterious western land, he sets out to find the source of the golden grain, dreaming of a better life for his subjects.

GRAPHIC NOVEL

Call number: 741.5 MIY

Genre: Graphic Novel, Fiction

Reading level: 11-12

Length: 160 pages

Availability: MHHS

Andrea Chapela, one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists of 2021, breaks down literary and scientific conventions in this prize-winning collection of experimental essays exploring the properties and poetics of glass, mirrors, and light as a means of understanding the self.

In powerful, formally inventive essays, The Visible Unseen disrupts the purported cultural divide between arts and science. As both a chemist and an award-winning author, Chapela zeros in on the literary metaphors buried in the facts and figures of her scientific observations. Through questioning scientific conundrums that lie beyond the limits of human perception, she winds up putting herself under the microscope as well.

Call number: TBD CHA

Genre: TBD

Reading level: 11-12

Length: 160 pages

Availability: MHHS

Stonewall Honor recipient and three-time National Book Award Longlist selectee Anna-Marie McLemore weaves an intoxicating tale of glamor and heartache in Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, part of the Remixed Classics series.

New York City, 1922. Nicolás Caraveo, a 17-year-old transgender boy from Wisconsin, has no interest in the city’s glamor. Going to New York is all about establishing himself as a young professional, which could set up his future―and his life as a man―and benefit his family.

Nick’s neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious young man named Jay Gatsby, whose castle-like mansion is the stage for parties so extravagant that they both dazzle and terrify Nick. At one of these parties, Nick learns that the spectacle is all meant to impress a girl from Jay’s past―Daisy. And he learns something else: Jay is also transgender.

Call number: FIC McL

Genre: YA Historical Fiction, LGBTQIA+

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 336 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction

Timely, thrilling, and gripping from start to finish. An absolute page-turner.

Jay is living his best life at Karloff Country, one of the world’s most famous resorts. He’s got his family, his crew, and an incredible after-school job at the property’s main theme park. Life isn’t so great for the rest of the world, but when people come here to vacation, it’s to get away from all that. As things outside get worse, trouble starts seeping into Karloff. Whether they like it or not.

Call number: FIC GIL

Genre: YA Horror, Thriller, Suspense

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 400 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction

Three teens struggle to carve out futures for themselves under a totalitarian regime.

Czechoslovakia, 1969. Seventeen-year-old Pavol has watched his country's freedoms disappear in the wake of the Soviet Union's invasion. He's seen his own dreams disappear too. In a desperate, fatal act of protest against the oppressive new government, he sets himself on fire in public, hoping to motivate others to fight for change.

Instead, Pavol's death launches a government investigation into three of his closest friends. With their futures hanging in the balance, all three must decide whether to keep struggling to survive in the country Pavol died hoping to save . . . or risk a perilous escape to the other side.

Call number: FIC MIL

Genre: YA Historical Fiction

Reading level: 8-12

Length: 328 pages

Availability: MHHS

It’s your turn to HUNT A KILLER in this original YA mystery based on the bestselling immersive murder mystery game!

The town of Barton Beach is a popular summer destination known for its surfing, sandy beaches, and local restaurants, like the Beachcomber. Or at least it was -- until Flash Fremont washes up dead on the shore. This original Hunt A Killer novel features all new characters, in-world clues, and a mystery not seen in the games!

Call number: FIC ROE

Genre: YA Horror, Thriller

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 304 pages

Availability: MHHS

From the author of To Break a Covenant comes an edge-of-your-seat read that will leave your heart pounding.

One week ago, Riley Kowalski joined a team of four other teens for an internship on climate change research in the Antarctic, sponsored by one of the world's largest tech companies. It was just the opportunity she had been searching for―an escape from the ridicule she'd received after a panic attack at school, a fresh start.

But their small team isn't alone in the remote, frozen reaches of the polar south.

In the eerie haze of evening sunlight, Riley sees something out of the corner of her eye―something that's watching them.

Call number: FIC AME

Genre: YA Fantasy, Horror

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 400 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy