The Check-in!

A stunning collection of short stories about the intersection of family, culture, and food in the lives in teens, from bestselling and critically acclaimed authors, including Sandhya Menon, Anna-Marie McLemore, and Rin Chupeco.

Welcome to Hungry Hearts Row, where the answers to most of life’s hard questions are kneaded, rolled, baked. Where a typical greeting is, “Have you had anything to eat?” Where magic and food and love are sometimes one in the same.

Told in interconnected short stories, Hungry Hearts explores the many meanings food can take on beyond mere nourishment. It can symbolize love and despair, family and culture, belonging and home.

Call number: FIC CHA

Genre: YA Fiction, Romance, Short Stories

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 368 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction

Harry Black is lost between the world of war and the land of myth in this illustrated novel that transports the tale of Orpheus to World War II–era London.

Brothers Marcus and Julian Sedgwick team up to pen this haunting tale of another pair of brothers, caught between life and death in World War II. Harry Black, a conscientious objector, artist, and firefighter battling the blazes of German bombing in London in 1944, wakes in the hospital to news that his soldier brother, Ellis, has been killed. In the delirium of his wounded state, Harry’s mind begins to blur the distinctions between the reality of war-torn London, the fiction of his unpublished sci-fi novel, and the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Driven by visions of Ellis still alive and a sense of poetic inevitability, Harry sets off on a search for his brother that will lead him deep into the city’s Underworld. With otherworldly paintings by Alexis Deacon depicting Harry’s surreal descent further into the depths of hell, this eerily beautiful blend of prose, verse, and illustration delves into love, loyalty, and the unbreakable bonds of brotherhood as it builds to a fierce indictment of mechanized warfare.

Call number: FIC SED

Genre: YA Historical Fiction

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 320 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction

In the vein of Inside Out and Back Again and The War That Saved My Life comes a poignant, personal, and hopeful tale of India's partition, and of one girl's journey to find a new home in a divided country.

It's 1947, and India, newly independent of British rule, has been separated into two countries: Pakistan and India. The divide has created much tension between Hindus and Muslims, and hundreds of thousands are killed crossing borders.

Half-Muslim, half-Hindu twelve-year-old Nisha doesn't know where she belongs, or what her country is anymore. When Papa decides it's too dangerous to stay in what is now Pakistan, Nisha and her family become refugees and embark first by train but later on foot to reach her new home. The journey is long, difficult, and dangerous, and after losing her mother as a baby, Nisha can't imagine losing her homeland, too. But even if her country has been ripped apart, Nisha still believes in the possibility of putting herself back together.

Call number: FIC HIR

Genre: YA Historical Fiction

Reading level: 3-7

Length: 288 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction

The ratings are real. One number, 0 to 100, determines your place in society. Earn a high rating, and the world is yours for the taking. But fall to zero, and you may as well cease to exist.

Societies thrive on order, and the Rating System is the ultimate symbol of organized social mobility. The higher it soars, the more valued you are. The lower it plummets, the harder you must work to improve yourself. For the students at the prestigious Maplethorpe Academy, every single thing they do is reflected in their ratings, updated daily and available for all to see.But when an act of vandalism sullies the front doors of the school, it sets off a chain reaction that will shake the lives of six special students -- and the world beyond.

Call number: FIC GRE

Genre: YA Fantasy

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 336 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fantasy, Fiction

Fans of dark fairy-tales like The Hazel Wood and The Cruel Prince will relish this atmospheric and absorbing book based on Guillermo del Toro’s critically acclaimed movie.

Oscar winning writer-director Guillermo del Toro and bestselling author Cornelia Funke have come together to transform del Toro’s hit movie Pan’s Labyrinth into an epic and dark fantasy novel for readers of all ages, complete with haunting illustrations and enchanting short stories that flesh out the folklore of this fascinating world.

This spellbinding tale takes readers to a sinister, magical, and war-torn world filled with richly drawn characters like trickster fauns, murderous soldiers, child-eating monsters, courageous rebels, and a long-lost princess hoping to be reunited with her family.

Call number: FIC TOR

Genre: YA Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Folklore

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 272 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fantasy, Fiction

From the New York Times bestselling author of Emergency Contact, which Rainbow Rowell called “smart and funny,” comes an unforgettable new romance about how social media influences relationships every day..

When Leanna and Pablo meet at 5:00 a.m. at the bodega in the dead of winter it’s absurd to think they’d be A Thing. But as they discover who they are, who they want to be, and how to defy the deafening expectations of everyone else, Lee and Pab turn to each other. Which, of course, is when things get properly complicated.

Call number: FIC CHO

Genre: Nonfiction, Science, Weather

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 432 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction

With wit, love, and bracing flashes of anger, Creatures probes the complexities of family and abandonment, guilt and forgiveness, betrayal and grief—and exerts a pull as strong as the tides.

On the eve of Evangeline’s wedding on Winter Island, the groom may be lost at sea, a dead whale is trapped in the harbor, and Evie’s mostly absent mother has shown up out of the blue. From there, in this mesmerizing, provocative debut, the narrative flows back and forth through time as Evie reckons with her complicated upbringing—a weed-dealing, charming but neglectful father, a wild-child best friend—in this lush land off the coast of Southern California.

Call number: FIC MET

Genre: Fiction

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 241 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievements: Fiction

From Newbery Honor- and Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Renée Watson comes a heartwarming and inspiring novel for middle schoolers about finding deep roots and exploring the past, the present, and the places that make us who we are.

All Amara wants for her birthday is to visit her father’s family in New York City--Harlem, to be exact. She can’t wait to finally meet her Grandpa Earl and cousins in person, and to stay in the brownstone where her father grew up. Maybe this will help her understand her family--and herself--in new way.

But New York City is not exactly what Amara thought it would be. It’s crowded, with confusing subways, suffocating sidewalks, and her father is too busy with work to spend time with her and too angry to spend time with Grandpa Earl. As she explores, asks questions, and learns more and more about Harlem and about her father and his family history, she realizes how, in some ways more than others, she connects with him, her home, and her family.

Call number: FIC WAT

Genre: YA Fiction

Reading level: 4-6

Length: 224 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction

GRAPHIC NOVEL

The Eisner Award–winning story about a student figuring out radical politics in a messy world.

Sophie is young and queer and into feminist theory. She decides to study abroad, choosing Paris for no firm reason beyond liking French comics. Feeling a bit lonely and out of place, she’s desperate for community and a sense of belonging. She stumbles into what/who she’s looking for when she meets Zena.

An anarchist student-activist committed to veganism and shoplifting, Zena offers Sophie a whole new political ideology that feels electric. Enamored―of Zena, of the idea of living more righteously―Sophie finds herself swept up in a whirlwind friendship that blows her even further from her rural California roots as they embark on a disastrous hitchhiking trip to Amsterdam and Berlin, full of couch surfing, drug tripping, and radical book fairs.

GRAPHIC NOVEL

Call number: 741.5 YAN

Genre: YA Graphic Novel, LGBTQIA+

Reading level: 10-12

Length: 204 pages

Availability: MHHS

Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members, but with the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative assassinated him at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the reverend himself. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who spent a year in town reporting on the Maxwell case and many more trying to finish the book she called The Reverend.

Cep brings this remarkable story to life, from the horrifying murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South, while offering a deeply moving portrait of one of our most revered writers.

Call number: 364.15 CEP

Genre: Nonfiction, True Crime

Reading level: 10-12

Length: 352 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievements: Biography, History, Nonfiction

Pollinators in Crisis

Apples, blueberries, peppers, cucumbers, coffee, and vanilla. Do you like to eat and drink? Then you might want to thank a bee.

Bees pollinate 75 percent of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts grown in the United States. Around the world, bees pollinate $24 billion worth of crops each year. Without bees, humans would face a drastically reduced diet. We need bees to grow the foods that keep us healthy.

But numbers of bees are falling, and that has scientists alarmed. What's causing the decline? Diseases, pesticides, climate change, and loss of habitat are all threatening bee populations. Some bee species are teetering on the brink of extinction.

Call number: 595.79 HIR

Genre: Nonfiction, Science, Ecology, Insects

Reading level: 6-12

Length: 96 pages

Availability: MHHS

A luminous companion to the phenomenal bestseller Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has attracted one of the world’s largest online followings with his fascinating, widely accessible insights into science and our universe. Now, Tyson invites us to go behind the scenes of his public fame by revealing his correspondence with people across the globe who have sought him out in search of answers. In this hand-picked collection of 101 letters, Tyson draws upon cosmic perspectives to address a vast array of questions about science, faith, philosophy, life, and of course, Pluto. His succinct, opinionated, passionate, and often funny responses reflect his popularity and standing as a leading educator.

Call number: 523.01 TYS

Genre: Nonfiction, Science, Biography, Astrophysics

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 272 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievements: Autobiography, Science, Nonfiction

Three-time Hugo Award winner and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption that sharply examine modern society in her first collection of short fiction, which includes never-before-seen stories.

Spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story "The City Born Great," a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis's soul.

Call number: FIC JEM

Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories

Reading level: 10-12

Length: 448 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction

GRAPHIC NOVEL

Baby-Sitters Little Sister series

A fresh and fun graphic novel series spin-off of The Baby-sitters Club, featuring Kristy's little stepsister!

Karen Brewer lives next door to Mrs. Porter, who wears long robes and has wild gray hair. Mrs. Porter has a black cat named Midnight and always seems to be working in her garden. Karen isn't supposed to spy on her neighbor, but she's determined to prove that Mrs. Porter is a witch named Morbidda Destiny! Mrs. Porter is getting ready to have a special meeting at her house, and Karen is sure the meeting is for witches. Are they going to cast a spell on Karen? Or will she be brave enough to send them away -- once and for all?

GRAPHIC NOVEL

Call number: 741.5 FAR

Genre: Graphic novel, Juvenile Fiction

Reading level: 2-5

Length: 144 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction

Winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction! Perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, Ibi Zoboi, and Erika L. Sánchez, this gorgeously written and deeply moving novel is the YA debut from the award-winning author of Inside Out & Back Again. 4 starred reviews!

In the final days of the Việt Nam War, Hằng takes her little brother, Linh, to the airport, determined to find a way to safety in America. In a split second, Linh is ripped from her arms—and Hằng is left behind in the war-torn country.

Six years later, Hằng has made the brutal journey from Việt Nam and is now in Texas as a refugee. She doesn’t know how she will find the little brother who was taken from her until she meets LeeRoy, a city boy with big rodeo dreams, who decides to help her.

Call number: FIC LAI

Genre: YA Fiction, Historical Fiction

Reading level: 8-9

Length: 320 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction