Ms Rush Reads

copyright date: September 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (8 th grade and up) I wish I would’ve known this was the beginning of a series before I started this book.   Then again, I might never have picked it up if I thought I might be committing to multiple books… At any rate, this is not a story I will be sad to return to this fall when the sequel is released.   Anya’s story takes place in New York City, in the future.   Around the time you will be old enough to be grandparents. This is a sort of post-apocalyptic, dystopian kind of book in a mild way.   Basically, the United States has self-destructed, and yet life seems to go surprisingly similar to the way we live nowadays.   Except that water and paper are costly and hard to come by.   Chocolate is prohibited.   Caffeine is an illegal drug.   Which is all to say that the setting alone is intriguing. Add to that setting, the fact that Anya is the oldest daughter of the biggest mafia boss, and you’ve got a gr

copyright date: August 2010 primarily marketed for: young adults (14 and up) This was a deliciously creepy mystery.   It is reminiscent of the Christopher Pike books I used to read when I was younger.   Just as bloody and just as edgy.   I Wish You Were Dead begins with blog posts from a mystery blogger wishing Lucy Cunningham were dead.   The story continues by describing Lucy’s kidnapping without giving away the culprit.   Immediately, I was hooked.   Then the action switches to following Madison Archer, a high school student who was friends Lucy and was one of the last people to see her alive.    Most of the story is told through Madison’s perspective, but interspersed with her story are the blog posts, the crime scenes, and the voice of the kidnapper.   This is a mean girls story mixed with romance, suspense, blood, gore, and the elements of a classic mystery. The language and the crime scenes in this book are definitely targeting mature readers, but none of it ever

copyright date: June 2011 primarily marketed for: (young adults, 8 th grade and up) This is what I call a “smart guy-book".  When you guys are ready to move away from fantasy into realistic fiction about teenage guy issues, Stupid Fast is one of the books you will have to turn to.  This is a book for you guys who read Invisible and Godless by Pete Hautman, Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson, Shift by Jennifer Bradbury, Son of the Mob by Gordon Korman, anything by Chris Crutcher or John Green, and especially About a Boy by Nick Hornby. Stupid Fast is the story of Felton Reinstein.  He is a Jewish teenager who was fiver years old when he discovered his father had hung himself in the garage.  That was the beginning of a lot of years of instability for Felton and his family.  Now that he is a teenager, Felton is struggling to grow up, take care of his younger brother, reach his newfound athletic (not to mention social) potential, and escape the disaster his mother is

copyright date: November 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (12 and up) This is another book I got free and signed at the NCTE convention in November.   As soon as I returned back to school, this book was checked out and it just now, in February made its way back into my hands long enough for me to read it.   I am really not sure why my students were even passing this book around because this book was written to entertain me .   Seriously. First of all, it takes place in 1996—the year I graduated high school.   How cool is that?   Second of all, it is written in alternating viewpoints with Josh’s character written by Jay Asher and Emma’s character written by Carolyn Mackler.   How fun is that? The fun does not stop there, though!   The premise is that Josh receives an America Online CD in the mail.   Remember those?   No?   That’s because this book is about what it was like back in the day! Since his mom won’t allow him to get the internet at his house, he bring

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher copyright date: October 2007 primarily marketed for: young adults (12 and up) This is one of those books I heard people talk about for so long that I thought I knew what it was about.   I knew it was the story of a girl who committed suicide, but had left behind cassette tapes explaining the thirteen reasons why.   I knew it was moving.   I knew it was powerful.   I knew it was about a girl who was bullied.   I knew reading it changed people. But I had no idea. First of all, it is not really the story of Hannah.   It is really the story of Clay.   Clay receives the 7 cassette tapes Hannah left behind in an anonymous package in the mail.   He has to hunker down in the garage to listen to the tapes because it is the only place with an old cassette player.   As he listens to the tapes, Clay learns that all 13 people who make up Hannah’s story, who played some part in the events that led her to take her own life, have heard or will hear these

copyright date: May 2011 primarily marketed for: teens (14 and up) I kept hearing hype about this book,   “If you liked The Hunger Games , you will like Divergent. ”   I was skeptical.   No book can come close to the power of Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games, which I think is the perfect mix of every genre AND is well crafted.   So, I did not have my hopes up with Divergent.   Okay, maybe I was a little hopeful.   I was resistant at the beginning.   The voice in my head said, “This is a rip off.   This is just like when everyone started reading other vampire books because they liked Twilight.   As if the best thing about Twilight were the vampires.   Puh-lease.   This is just another post-apocalyptic novel some publisher knew would sell.” The voice in my head can be rather harsh sometimes. By the middle of the book the voice in my head was too focused on the characters and plot of Divergent to question anything else.   This book is filled with romance, hard-core violence (f