Ghost

Jason Reynolds is a phenomenal young adult writer. He truly understands his audience and has created another book that all my boys and reluctant readers are picking up.  

Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw is a runner.  He’s run away from his unpredictably violent father and his own problems at school, but now he’s run straight onto a track team. The only catch is he has to stay out of trouble to stay on the team.  That’s easy enough to say but harder to accomplish in reality.

This book does a really good job with pacing.  There’s never any real lag in the story and everything flows together.  I also really enjoy how it shows actions and consequences.  For example, Ghost doesn’t have money for real track shoes, so he ends up stealing some.  For a while he thinks he gets away with it, but in the end he has to confess to his mistake.  I also like how they acknowledged his complicated feelings.  Yes, he’s done bad things, but he understands they are not what he wants to do.  However, I do feel like it could have been taken further.  For example, Ghost has some PTSD from the night that his father became violent towards him.  He can’t sleep in his room, and he freaks out when he’s stuck in the storage room at the local grocery store since that’s where he ran to hide.  But this is never really explained or resolved, so it’s just something you have to infer. I guess I really wanted more to this book, but since it’s the first in a series, we will get to know the characters more as we go (the second book Patina just came out).

Overall, it’s a good book for the target audience (it kind of reminds me of the Bluford book series that was popular about ten years ago), but more advanced middle schoolers may need a more challenging read.