Ms Rush Reads

copyright date: January 5, 2021 primarily marketed for: Middle Grades Unplugged  by Gordon Korman overflows with humor, action, and heart. If you are a Korman fan, this is a perfect addition to your collection. If you are new to Korman, this will be the perfect gateway book. Jett Baranov is the son of a Silicon Valley tech genius. To call him spoiled would be a massive understatement. After a particularly risky stunt, from which his dad had to bail him out, Jett has been sent to spend a rehabilitative summer at the Oasis with his father's right hand man as a caretaker.  At the Oasis, Jett is forced to exist completely unplugged from the devices, social media, and entertainment he has come to rely on. Instead, he is invited to meditate, eat healthy, and relax in natural hot springs.  Of course, Jett is much more interested in finding a way out of the Oasis than he is in participating in any wellness activities. However, as the summer unfolds, Jett becomes entangled in a de...

copyright date: October 2015 primarily marketed for: young adults (6th grade and up) The Beast of Cretacea by Todd Strasser is just the book the world needed.   Strasser’s futuristic retelling of Herman Melville’s classic, Moby Dick, is a dystopian adventure story that is filled with heart.   The story opens with protagonist, Ishmael, waking up on a ship on Cretacea after being transported from Earth, which is covered by the Shroud and becoming a less and less viable home for humans.   Ishmael hopes to earn enough money hunting sea creatures called terrafins to pay the way for his foster parents and brother to join him.   Readers get details about Ishmael’s past in chapters that flashback to his life on Earth.   These chapters develop Ishmael’s relationship with his foster family and solidify our understanding of his motivation to be successful aboard the ship.   However, there is much more to Ishmael than his past.   He f...

copyright date: September 2013 primarily marketed for: young adults (7 th grade and up) Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson is not the kind of book you would typically find in my stack of books to be read.   However, something about it called to me.   And boy am I glad it did!   I am eagerly awaiting the sequel, promised to be released this fall. The story begins with a gripping prologue that takes place years before the action of the rest of the book.   It is the story of a young boy named David witnessing his father’s death at the hands of Steelheart, a sort of superhuman called an Epic.   Although David is in awe of Steelheart’s power to turn anything that is not living to steel, he is even more amazed to witness Steelheart reveal a weakness.   David is the only human who knows the truth about what happened during that attack and survived. Years later, when David is eighteen, he has finally caught up with a group of ...

copyright date: November 2011 primarily marketed for:   young adults (12 and up) I finally, reluctantly picked this book up after hearing lots of talk about how awesome it is.  I have to admit, I just couldn’t believe that ANOTHER post-apocalyptic-book-for-the-fans-of- Hunger-Games could really be that good.  Well, let me tell you, Legend by Marie Lu is really that good.  I think I might even like this one a little bit better than Divergent by Veronica Roth. Legend is told in alternating viewpoints and follows two protagonists: June and Day. June is one of the elite.  She is following in the footsteps of her esteemed older brother Metias by working her way up the military ranks with the speed only a prodigy could manage.  She is fully determined to do whatever it takes to defend the Republic’s honor.  Day is the Republic’s most wanted criminal.  He is a devious mastermind, but is driven by a love for his family and ...

copyright date: May 2012 primarily marketed for:  young adults (14 and up) I could probably start and end this review with: THIS IS THE SEQUEL TO DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth, because if you read Divergent , of course you want to read this next installment in the trilogy.  The sequel to Divergent is out.  Enough said.  Now you want to read it.   But I just can’t read a book this good without, well, blogging about it! I read LOTS of books between the moment I finished Divergent and the moment I got my hands on Insurgent.   However, it only took seconds for the details of the first book to come flooding back to me as I read the sequel.  Plus, Roth included helpful reminders about key character points (and there are a lot of characters to keep track of) to make catching up even easier.  In fact, other than a temporary (but crucial) mix-up between the characters of Johanna and Jeanine, I had no trouble keeping everybody stra...

copyright date: November 2010 primarily marketed for: grade 6 and up Hero by Mike Lupica was a refreshingly fast-paced exciting book to read after slogging through Matthew Cody’s Powerless as a class read aloud to prepare for our author visit with the author.   Although both books are appropriate for a 6 th grade audience, Hero is much more appealing for students beyond 6 th grade.   Hero starts out describing a few moments of Zach’s father’s life, from his father’s point of view.   The rest of the book flips to a third person account of Zach’s adventures after his father is gone.   Zach begins to discover he has superpowers, but Lupica manages to tell this superhero story so well that it almost seems plausible.   The story is set in New York City. Being a fan of the city, I enjoyed the talk about landmarks and the city feel to the book.   Not to mention, how fun it is to imagine living Zach’s life as the child of parents w...

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. ...

I read and fell in love with The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans in 1995.   I immediately recognized his name when I came across this, his first young adult title.    Although the story seemed like a far cry from the touching message of love and hope in the first book I had read by Evans, I was confident the quality of writing would be of the same high standard.   And it is. Michael Vey has a special power that nobody else knows about.   Well, nobody except his mother and his best friend.   He can deliver high voltage shocks of electricity without the help of a taser.   When he finally gets tired of being bullied at school and uses his power to stop the bullies from going too far, his secret is compromised.   At first, he seems to benefit from the newfound attention.   He is happy with his new friends, especially the cheerleader who witnessed the electric incident.   However, his happiness short circuits when the people wh...