Ghost by Jason Reynolds (208 pages) is a story about a boy named Castle Cranshaw who is 13-14 years old. Castle and his mom lived in an apartment complex with Castle's dad, but Castle’s dad was an alcoholic, and he likes eating sunflower seeds. One night while Castle was sleeping his mom and dad were fighting in another room. At some point in the argument, his mom ran to Castle’s room and told him they had to leave quickly. They ran out of the house with castle’s dad chasing after them and shooting at them both and all the way to a little convenience store, Mr. Charles's store. After that Castle started going by the name of Ghost. After caste left school every day he would go to Mr. Charles's store and buy sunflower seeds then he would walk to the gym and sit right across from the gym and watch all the people there. One day he decided to go check out the track place close by. He ended up unexpectedly joining the track team with some persuasion from the coach. Then the next day castle got into a fight in school and he was sent to the principal's office where Castle was told to call his mom but instead got the principal to believe that the coach was his uncle and then the coach came to pick him up. After that castle didn’t have very many altercations. But one day castle decides to skip school because he got laughed at for cutting his high tops and making them into low tops, and he steals some shoes and then runs into Mr. Charles' store and castle stayed to help Mr. Charles. A few more days went by and the coach caught Castel and made him apologize and then he made Castle clean his car. A day or two after that their big tournament comes up and that's where castle finds out that the person he got into a fight with was also on a track team. 

One of the most interesting characters in the story is Ghost. Ghost is important to this story because he is the main character, he is the one telling the story. When the reader reads the story they can visualize what is happening because they can see what ghosts see, hear what ghosts hear, etc…. And another reason ghost is interesting is because he helps us see the life lesson the story is trying to tell the reader. He plays an important role in the story because if he didn’t help the reader see the life lesson of the story there would be no point to the story at all.

Another favorite character is coach brody. He may seem mean or strict at first but once the story continues the reader will come to find out that he’s just as soft as everyone else. Coach Brody is very important to the story because he helps Ghost overcome life's challenges and helps Ghost find his way in life without coach Brody the story just wouldn’t be the same. He plays an important role in the story by showing us that without a good role model to help us guide ourselves through life it would just be an endless cycle of good people that turned bad just because we didn’t have good role models.

One very important passage from the story happens when “You can't run away from who you are, but what you can do is run toward who you want to be.” This quote affects Ghost so much, after Ghost got caught with the stolen shoes coach Brody was so angry and was going to tell Castle's mom but he decided not to. Coach Brody ended up yelling at Castel and yelling that quote at him after that incident Castel was altercation-free for the rest of the book. Because of this quote, Castle continued storing on the track team and finally got to run a real race. This quote perfectly sums up the title of this book and I look forward to reading the sequels of this book. Learning to trust people is an everyday occurrence. This is an important theme because if we didn’t learn to trust people, we would just walk around being cautious around everyone and everything, and everyone would feel trapped in their minds. 

Finally, this is a 4-star recommended book! The book was amazing, it drew people in, it was intriguing, there was chaos at every turn, and it was just so interesting and entertaining! But I just wish that it wouldn’t have ended as it did.

(777 words)