Ms Rush Reads

copyright date: February 2014 primarily marketed for: young adults (high school) Reading Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith felt like being let in on a secret.   The flap copy had me completely baffled as to why I wanted to read a book about an unstoppable army of hungry, horny, giant praying mantis creatures.   However, after reading Winger , I was sure Smith’s writing would be brilliant, and the buzz amongst my social media connections was that the book kept people thinking long after they finished reading.   There was no way to know for myself other than to jump right in and start reading, to hear the secret firsthand.   From the very start I was equally shocked, amused, and charmed by Austin Szerba and his friend Robby Brees. They are pretty typical teenage boys living in a small town in Iowa.   Austin is struggling with typical teenage boy things, like confusion over his feelings for his girlfriend and his best frie...

copyright date: October 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (high school) The books I love the most are the ones I find myself most compelled to write about.   I am woefully behind on posting about the books I’ve read this school year, yet here I am making time to share another incredible story. I find it is most difficult to share the books I love.   Something about my connection with a story like this makes it seem almost as if nobody else could possibly enjoy it as deeply as I have—surely it was tailor-made to fit my heart and stick to my ribs—how could anyone else find it as perfect a fit?   I don’t know the answer to that, but I sure hope you try this one on because part of me suspects it might fit you just right, too. Since I closed the covers of Maggie Stiefvater ’s The Scorpio Races early this morning, I have been haunted by the rhythm of the story.   The magic of sea still beats in my chest.   Puck’s connectio...

copyright date: August 2012 primarily marketed for: young adults (8 th grade and up) Every once in a while I read a book so amazing that I am torn between the urge to keep the wonder of its story all to myself and the desire to share its goodness with all the world.   Every Day by David Levithan is just such a book.   Becky Anderson, an owner of Anderson’s Bookshops said this is a book everyone should read.   She is right.   Every Day is the story of ‘A.’   ‘A’ wakes up each morning in a different person’s body.   ‘A’ has no gender, no race, no sexual orientation.   ‘A’ takes on the unique qualities of whatever body ‘A’ is inhabiting for the day.   Being that ‘A’ shifts from body to body, it is nearly impossible to make connections.   Any connections made have the potential to create difficulties for the owner of the body in which the connection was made.   As a result, ‘A’ seems desti...

copyright date: January 2011 primarily marketed for: young adult (8 th grade and up) The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman is a book of rare quality.   It is one of the very elite books that could give any John Green book a run for its money.   That is high praise.   This story of Wes and June opens, “The first time Wes saw June, he thought she was kind of funny-looking.”   Aren’t you charmed already?   The Big Crunch is a love story with universal appeal.   It is one of the few books I would call a romance for guys.   And he gets inside the head and heart of both Wes and June in equal doses.   Although I still sense that Wes is the protagonist here—it is more his story than it is June’s.   I am confident Hautman got Wes’s character right because he certainly wrote June accurately as a female teen in love.   I continuously found myself wondering how Pete Hautman could possibly know exactly what went on in my mind when I was her ag...

You knew it was coming.  How could I not share?  EVERYONE MUST READ JOHN GREEN’S LATEST WORK OF ART: THE FAULT IN OUR STARS .  Throughout my life (well, at least from 4 th grade, when I was introduced to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl until now, the 7 th month of my 34 th year of noticing the universe) the name ‘Augustus’ immediately evoked an image of a chubby, stubborn, chocolate-loving boy, doted upon by his mother, with the last name of Gloop.  The name ‘Augustus’ made me giggle about this character’s gluttonous follies inside the chocolate factory. Until reading John Green’s beloved new book The Fault in Our Stars . From now on, the name ‘Augustus’ will forever evoke an entirely different image and an entirely different set of emotions.  A casually hot, lean, limping ‘Augustus Waters’ has forever replaced the ‘Augustus’ of the book I treasured as a child—an unlit cigarette held loosely between his lips.  A longing sigh ...