Ms Rush Reads

copyright date: 1943 primarily marketed for: everyone The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint- Exupéry was a reread for me.   I read this book for the first time when I was in high school.   All I remembered about it was that I expected it to be too complex for me to understand, and I was surprised when at its charming simplicity.   I always remember feeling like I had a special place in my heart for The Little Prince , but I didn’t remember exactly why. It was written so long ago and is translated from French that it is no wonder I first expected to find its meaning elusive.   However, I am sure that if you pick up this book, it will nestle itself into a special place in your heart as well. Simply, The Little Prince is the story of a clever man who has never lost the child inside of himself and finds himself stranded in the desert after a plan crash.   In the desert, he happens upon the little prince who is traveling to earth from his d...

copyright date:   October 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (high school) Everybody Sees the Ants by A. S. King is unlike anything else I have ever read.   Lucky’s story has lingered in my mind long after I put the book down.   {The ants cheer.} Lucky Linderman has been ruthlessly bullied by Nader McMillan since second grade.   Needless to say, high school is not a pleasant experience for him.   His mother is a squid; she swims laps to escape reality.   His father is a turtle; he works long hours at his restaurant to escape reality.     His grandfather fought in the Vietnam War and never returned.   He is officially listed as Prisoner of War/Missing in Action.   When Lucky’s grandmother died, she charged him with the duty of continuing the search for his missing grandfather.   The book covers a summer in Lucky’s life when the bullying reaches a point where it can no longer b...

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 all...

“Every time the monster moved, Conor could hear the creak of wood groaning and yawning in the monster’s huge body.” In her review for the New York Times , Jessica Bruder refers to A Monster Calls as, “A story that lodges in your bones and stays there.”  This, I believe, is an understatement.  I am afraid my words, mere pixels on the screen, cannot begin to honor how truly special this book is. From his words in the Author’s Note, Patrick Ness held me spellbound.  Siobhan Dowd had developed an idea for a book about a monster and a boy whose mom had cancer.  Breast cancer cut her life short and she was unable to finish her story.  Patrick Ness, when asked to craft something from the seed of a story Dowd left behind said, “…the thing about ideas is that they grow other ideas.”  And so, A Monster Calls was born out of Dowd’s seed and Ness’s nurturing. I suppose a book with that kind of conception was bound to be incredible, but I am sure not even ...