Ms Rush Reads

copyright date: January 2012 primarily marketed for: young adults (12 and up) After reading a few heavy books, I picked up The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith from my shelf of to-be-read books expecting a light, fluffy romance.   I should know better by now.   I wouldn’t have purchased it if it were just a light, fluffy romance.   Of course I was completely sucked in by the premise that everything happens for a reason, even if the reason is not apparent at first.   Hadley is on her way to London for her father’s wedding—the beginning of a marriage to a woman Hadley has never met because why would she want to meet the source of the affair that broke her family apart?   Anyway, she misses her flight because of a series of choices and mishaps.   Now, having changed her path to London, Hadley encounters a guy.   An attractive guy.   A charming guy.   A guy who insists...

copyright date: 1991 primarily marketed for: young adults (8 th grade up) If you like A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer and think What Daddy Did by Neal Shusterman is going to be another true story to indulge your desire to read about the human spirit’s will to endure, think again.    What Daddy Did is so much more.   So much bigger. I started reading it one night before falling asleep.   Two hours later I still hadn’t closed the book and I don’t remember having taken a breath.   I awoke the next morning still within the powerful grip of this story. What Daddy Did is the fictionalized true story of young boy who Shusterman calls Preston Scott.   When Preston was only eleven years old, his Mom was shot in the back of the head and murdered by his father after marital struggles tore their family apart.   Although the book tells about the events leading up to the murder as well as the moments during which the news un...

copyright date: 1991 primarily marketed for: young adults (7 th grade up) In preparation for our author re-visit, I tried to read every Neal Shusterman book that has been sitting in my pile of books to read.   Every time I read his work I am blown away. Speeding Bullet is typical of Shusterman’s work in the sense that there is a supernatural element in the story, but it is so realistically told that as a reader, I completely suspend my disbelief.     Nick Herrera is an average teenager with below average intelligence.   He is constantly told by teachers he sees as completely unreliable that if he simply believed in himself more, he would achieve greater success in school.   It is not until a chance encounter with fate at a New York subway stop that Nick’s self-image begins to change.   After saving a young girl’s life and defying death himself in the face of a speeding train, Nick notices that luck is consis...