Ms Rush Reads

  copyright date: May 2013 primarily marketed for: Young Adults (high school) Have you ever read Looking for Alaska by John Green?   I never thought I would ever read another book that I could recommend as being just as good as Looking for Alaska .   Until I read Winger by Andrew Smith .   I laughed audibly at fictional characters while reading this book.   My heart ached for fictional characters while reading this book.   I had tears streaming down my face over fictional characters while reading this book.   It is a good book.   Great book.   Incredible book.   It is about a brilliant fourteen-year-old kid at a boarding school with sixteen-year-olds.   After getting into some cell-phone trouble, this self-proclaimed runt is thrust into living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troubled students.   The kind of troubled students who would love to squash a fourteen-year-old boy.  ...

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: 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:   September 2013 primarily marketed for:    middle grades (3 rd to 7 th ) One day John and Marta find a young boy fast asleep on their porch.   Should they wake him?   No, he looks like he needs the sleep.   They decide to wait.   As they wait, their curiosity grows.   However, when he finally awakens, they discover the boy does not speak and the only information they can get is from a note that was left alongside him.   In Sharon Creech’s charming story of The Boy on the Porch , it turns out the main character is not really the boy at all, but instead the role is shared by the selfless caretakers, John and Marta.   Although they are unlikely and unexpected parents, their ability to open their minds and hearts proves to reach far beyond the simple needs of the boy on the porch.        This simple twist on the age old tale of a baby left in a basket on a doorstep i...

copyright date: May 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (high school) Shine by Lauren Myracle is one of those books I felt an itch to talk about as soon as I finished reading.   The story is that powerful, the craft that stunning, the characters that compelling.   It is a book that will surely linger in my mind for days to come. Ever since I took a summer literature class in Southern American Fiction, I have been in love with stories set in the South.   So, I am sure that element drew me further into what is already a captivating story.   Shine begins with a fictitious, yet chilling, newspaper article reporting the brutal beating of sixteen-year-old Patrick Truman, apparently driven by his homosexuality.   From that point on, while Patrick lies comatose in a hospital, the story becomes Cat’s.   Cat used to be one of Patrick’s closest friends, before a traumatic event in her own life caused her to quietly withdraw fr...

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...