Ms Rush Reads

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: August 2012 primarily marketed for: young adults (12 and up) Although there are still a few days until UnWholly by Neal Shusterman is released on August 28 th , I managed to get my hands on an Advanced Readers’ Copy, thanks to Mrs. Foreman (formerly Miss England).   This book confirms what I have believed for years: Neal Shusterman is brilliant.   Why he isn’t winning awards left and right is beyond me.   If you haven’t read the first book in this series, Unwind , you have to start there.   The basis of the story is that it takes place in the near future, after the fictional Third World War, which was fought over the issue of abortion.   In an effort to end the fighting and reach an agreement, both sides compromised, banning abortion as we know it, and sanctioning the retroactive abortion (through a process called unwinding) of teenagers whose parents okay it.   But that doesn’t even begin to scrat...

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: March 2012 primarily marketed for: young adults (12 and up) Starters by Lissa Price tells the story of Callie, a teenager living in a world where Spore Warfare has killed off anyone who was middle-aged.   When Spore Warfare was in use, the government gave the elderly (Enders) and those under the age of twenty (Starters) priority when it came to getting vaccinated because they were most at-risk.   So, it turned out they were the only survivors.   Now, without her parents or any surviving grandparents, Callie is left to care for herself and her sickly younger brother.   She has support from a childhood friend, Michael, but that is not enough to keep them safe and well-fed.   Callie is tempted to earn enough money to save her brother and friend by becoming a rental Starter.   She is invited to undergo a complete makeover, and earn a large sum of money simply for signing up to rent her body three times to Enders who ...

copyright date: November 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (14 and up) This book was a gift to me from Mrs. Wisniewski.  If you know Mrs. Wisniewski, you know that means it is going to be Good (notice the capital ‘G’).   When the story opens, Juliette is imprisoned.  She has not touched or spoken to anyone in 264 days.  The story starts inside of this isolation.  She has been locked up because she touched someone.  And her touch is lethal.  The story picks up when someone is thrown into the cell with her (and her deadly touch).  She remembers him from her life before.  Before she used her touch to kill someone.  She knew Adam when they were kids, before the world destroyed itself, but he doesn’t seem to remember her. Soon, Juliette is released from the darkness of her prison only to be imprisoned by a dangerous leader who wants to use her touch as if it is his own power to advance himself politically. While Juliette...

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 ...