Ghost by Jason Reynolds

I actually met Jason Reynolds at a NCTE conference about a year and a half ago. I had one of those weird experiences for a reader where listening to the author made me believe that I would love his book...and I did. I passed it around all my friends and they loved it too. One of them loved it so much, in fact, that they walked off with it and we had to replace it. Jason Reynolds is officially on my watch list, so I was very excited to see a series coming out from him.

The Track series, of which Ghost is the first, is about four friends of about middle school/high school age who are members of a track team. Four books are scheduled and each book follows a different one of the four.

Ghost kicks it off with Castle Crenshaw, known to himself as Ghost. Ghost is a poster child for tragic and damaged. His father is in jail for shooting a gun at he and his mom. So now his mom works hard in a hospital cafeteria during the day and studies to be a nurse at night. She works hard for him and Ghost knows it.

However, knowing something like that doesn't mean that it's easy or even possible to be the perfect kid. In fact, that's almost a recipe for a lot of internal turmoil and conflict. Ghost struggles and he has a temper. He gets in trouble at school a lot mainly because he hates a bully and he hates a showboat. This intolerance for a showboat sparks him into racing a hot shot sprinter on the team and one thing leads to another.

Ghost is good. Like really good. I gulped down the whole thing in about three and a half hours. It is a short book but the conversational tone of the writing and the pacing really gripped me hard. I was just watching this kid, who could easily be a kid that I teach, making all of these totally obvious mistakes and instead of getting annoyed with him, I really worried for him. Reynolds did a great job of capturing Ghost's voice.