Ms Rush Reads

copyright date: February 2012 primarily marketed for: young adults (12 and up) This summer I officially became a fan of graphic novels.   Somehow, I am more willing to suspend my disbelief when reading a graphic novel.   Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks is no exception. Maggie, who has been homeschooled up to now, is starting high school.   Her only companions have been her older brothers, who become her only support system in high school as well.   That is, until she meets Lucy and her somewhat elusive brother Alistair. Maggie, Lucy, and Alistair eventually find themselves in the midst of an adventure involving a museum, a graveyard, and a soul plagued with a sense of unrest. While Maggie gets to know her new friends and works through the adventure they’ve uncovered, she also gets to know herself better.   There is depth to her personality and although the ghost story Maggie’s life becomes is fanciful, the dynamic within her f...

copyright date: September 2011 (2010 in UK) primarily marketed for: intermediate readers (5 th grade and up) Growing up, I was familiar with Roddy Doyle .  My sister read his books for grown-ups and convinced me to watch a couple of her favorite movies, which were based on those books.  Years ago, I discovered his hilariously clever book for younger readers, The Giggler Treatment , a story about creatures called Gigglers who place dog poop in the paths of adults who’ve done wrong.  So, when I saw he had a new book out for young readers, I couldn’t wait to read it.  A Greyhound of a Girl is a book unlike any other I’ve read.  Roddy Doyle is a genius.  Life is a bit of a struggle for the protagonist, twelve-year-old Mary O’Hara.  Her granny is dying and she lost her best friend when her family moved away.  Now, she has to walk home down the hill from the bus stop alone before heading home to join her mother on a visi...

  copyright date: January 2008 primarily marketed for: young adults I love poetry, so books in verse are always appealing to me.   I picked this one up because of the poetry, even though ghost stories are not my thing (I like books about dead people, but not ghost stories, go figure).   At the opening of the story, Ava’s boyfriend Jackson has already died.   She is trying to figure out how to go on with her own life without him.   But he won’t leave her.   Although the verse in the book is dead on (no pun intended) and often gut-wrenchingly powerful, the way Jackson haunts Ava is very unsettling to me.   I was more drawn to the way Ava struggles to embrace the new shape her life has taken on since Jackson’s death.   Ava’s struggle is universal—the struggle to deal with loss.   Not all of us have lost a loved one due to death, but all of us have experienced loss of some kind—loss of a best friend, loss of a boyfriend or girlfriend,...