Ghost (RUN SERIES): 1

Product Information

When I served on a yearly committee of librarians in New York I’d notice that some books were difficult to get anyone to read. And She Could Not Find a Single Young Adult Fiction Book about a male-identified person of African Descent who runs. Reviewing Ghost in The New York Times, Kate Messner said that in his title character, Reynolds has created a protagonist "whose journey is so genuine that he's worthy of a place alongside Ramona and Joey Pigza on the bookshelves where our most beloved, imperfect characters live. You may choose to create a book trailer for the novel or adapt a scene in the book into a screenplay and film it.

Right at the beginning of the book, when Coach is trying to convince Ghost’s mom that he should be running, Ghost realizes that he’s in a situation that’s played out in loads of sports films. Twelve-year-old AJ lives within a stone’s throw of the London Stadium, and his dream is to one day run there. Middle class kids are remarkably good at ignoring their own privilege while kids like Ghost become almost invisible.When Ghost stumbles onto a local track team and decides to show them a thing or two (they think they can run? Castle's been through a major trauma, and as his self-given nickname--GHOST--suggests, he does his best to move through the world under the radar to avoid trouble. That’s easier said than done when Brandon Sanderson is in your face every day at school, you can’t forget your painful past, and when you want a new pair of trainers so badly you’d do anything to get them.

This book is the first of Jason Reynolds’s middle grade series about track, and what a beginning this is. Jason’s many works of fiction include When I Was the Greatest, Boy in the Black Suit, All American Boys (cowritten with Brendan Kiely), As Brave As You, For Every One, Miles Morales: Spider Man, the Run series ( Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and Lu), and Long Way Down, which received both a Newbery Honor and a Printz Honor. The sound was big, and sharp enough to make me feel like my brain was gonna pop in my head, enough to make my heart hiccup. His many books include All American Boys (cowritten with Brendan Kiely); When I Was the Greatest; The Boy in the Black Suit; Stamped; As Brave as You; For Every One; the Track series ( Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and Lu); Look Both Ways; Stuntboy, in the Meantime; Ain’t Burned All the Bright (recipient of the Caldecott Honor) and My Name Is Jason.Ma said the cops said that when they got to the house, he was sitting outside on the steps, shirtless, with the pistol beside him, guzzling beer, eating sunflower seeds, waiting. Closely read the last few pages of Chapter 5 and the beginning of Chapter 6, making sure to pay attention to the author’s use of figurative language. His voice seemed like an adult trying to disguise his life lessons by making them come from a kid who uses hip vernacular.

Ghost must come to terms with what he's running from and decide where he's running to: "you can't run away from who you are, but what you can do is run toward who you want to be. Even Ghost, ESPECIALLY Ghost, who makes you want to yell and him and cheer for him, sometimes at the same time. He wants to be on the team and one day he decides to show up these fancy people on the track and show them he can run too. From page one Reynolds has crafted one of the most compelling voices in fiction that I've read for quite. In a world where men from countries in Africa have the world records in foot-speed, shouldn't we have teen fiction modeling that?In addition to training the Defenders to be competitive runners, Coach also teaches them to work together as a team, helping them learn to be responsible and empathetic. I just sit there with the other people waiting for the bus, except I’m never actually waiting for it. Then there’s a cliffhanger where it was a big race and the starting gun fired great and that was the ending!