Ms Rush Reads

  release date: January 5, 2021 primarily marketed for: Middle grades The Sea in Winter  by Christine Day is a gift to its readers. It is a book of quiet strength with much to offer.  Maisie is a ballet dancer who feels most herself when she is at the dance studio. However, at the start of this story, Maisie is coping with a serious knee injury that prevents her from dancing long-term. She misses her friends from dance and struggles to maintain those connections when she is no longer part of the dancing life they shared.  When her mom and stepdad plan a road trip to the Olympic Peninsula to visit sites of familial and cultural significance, Maisie stubbornly overworks her healing knee. She is determined to heal and return to the studio  faster than expected. Although her knee is the only focus of Maisie's wellness journey, it turns out there is more to healing than physical fitness.  Maisie is a quietly compelling character, but I was surprised to find myse...

copyright date: January 2014 primarily marketed for:   young adults “Leaning against my father, the sadness finally broke open inside me, hollowing out my heart and leaving me bleeding.   My feet felt rooted in the dirt.   There were more than two bodies buried here.   Pieces of me that I didn’t even know were under the ground.   Pieces of Dad, too.” -from The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson is undoubtedly her most powerful work so far.   And that is saying a lot.   Somehow this story managed to charm me, break my heart, coax me to giggle, steal my breath away, and fill me with hope.   From the moment I began reading, I allowed little else to interfere with my path to the last page.   Hayley has traveled the country with her war veteran truck driver father for years before finally settling down to attend high school and lead a ‘normal’ ...

copyright date: 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (teens) The Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow opens with this quote: “There is one kind of sport which should be especially encouraged, although many people . . . consider it brutal and vulgar, and that is boxing . . . There is no other sport which equals this in developing the militant spirit, none that demands such a power of rapid decision or which gives the bod the flexibility of good steel . . . But, above all, a healthy youth has to learn to endure hard knocks.” -Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf As an opening, it is a perfect representation of Sharenow’s ability to craft a story that is at once rooted in history and grounded in contemporary relevance.   Karl Stern is a young boy growing up in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power.   He is Jewish by descent, though his family does not identify with or practice Jewish religion or culture.   His Jewish identity serves as t...

copyright date: May 2013 primarily marketed for: young adults (middle/high school) What a treat to find an unexpected sequel to a book I love!   Formerly Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham is the sequel to Shark Girl .   Both books are written in poetry form, which means each chapter(poem) uses sparse language to pack an emotional punch. Formerly Shark Girl tells what life is like for Jane now that over a year has passed since she lost most of her right arm in a shark attack.   Although she has already faced the initial struggle to heal and face life without the talent of her drawing hand, Jane’s struggles are not over.   She has to decide where to go to college, has to choose whether to study art or nursing, and has to make up for precious time in the dating scene that was lost while she focused on her physical recovery. The same thing that struck me when I first read Shark Girl struck me while reading this book—how real the chara...

copyright date: 1991 primarily marketed for: young adults (8 th grade up) If you like A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer and think What Daddy Did by Neal Shusterman is going to be another true story to indulge your desire to read about the human spirit’s will to endure, think again.    What Daddy Did is so much more.   So much bigger. I started reading it one night before falling asleep.   Two hours later I still hadn’t closed the book and I don’t remember having taken a breath.   I awoke the next morning still within the powerful grip of this story. What Daddy Did is the fictionalized true story of young boy who Shusterman calls Preston Scott.   When Preston was only eleven years old, his Mom was shot in the back of the head and murdered by his father after marital struggles tore their family apart.   Although the book tells about the events leading up to the murder as well as the moments during which the news un...