Coach Brody takes a chance on Ghost and gives him a future to run toward, but only if Ghost can learn to let go of the things he’s been running from. Life hasn't been super kind to Ghost - the kids at school make fun of him because he's poor and he carries around the weight of his father's betrayal. One day while killing time in the park, he stumbles upon a track practice and ends up racing one of the fastest kids on the team—and winning.

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. Though he experiences family trauma, resulting in his father going to prison, and has committed a crime himself, the reader can tell he is sensitive and has a conscience. I used to just put a whole bunch of them in my mouth at the same time, suck all the salt off, then spit them all out machine-gun-style. 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.My sixth graders are reluctant readers who like fast paced, realistic fiction with characters they can root for. His character is so authentic, you wouldn’t be surprised if he walked straight off the page, living and breathing.

Charles has to hold the record for saying, Let me guess, sunflower seeds, because he says that every single time I come in, which means I probably also already hold the record for responding, loudly, the exact same way. He is bullied for not having the right kit and made to feel inferior to the other children on the team, and this leads him to make some poor choices. When I go out to the schools to booktalk, twelve books in tow, I occasionally get the question of which of the year's books is my personal favorite.It also doesn’t provide easy answers, or present sports as a magical solution for black teen boys, and it resists tropes associated with this kind of narrative. Coach gives him some much needed direction, and helps to guide him, and he ends the book in a much more positive place than he started. Right at the start, almost like it’s some kind of superhero origin story, we hear how Ghost heard the gun go off that night he ran away from his home with his mom and “I felt like the loud shot made my legs move even faster. The audiobook narrator Guy Lockard is superb, delivering authentic voices especially for Ghost and the coach. It gave us a chance to talk about managing difficult feelings, how to react to bullying, and the consequences of the choices that we make.

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. Like Cleary, Jason Reynolds clearly remembers what it was to be a kid — the private humiliations, the silliness, the outsized misconceptions, the way the tiniest bit of support can change a day. I just sit there with the other people waiting for the bus, except I’m never actually waiting for it. Ghost would be at home both in a middle grade and YA section, and thus is of interest to pre-teens and younger teens, especially ones who will see some aspect of their own lives reflected in Ghost’s. The writing in this novel made me feel like I was 10 again, and I was just a little kid who liked to read books about sports.Ghost was my favourite character, but I didn’t like it when he stole the shoes because that is naughty and he could have ended up in jail. When I'm not reading, I also like knitting, crafty things, baking, eating, walking, taking photos, watching traumatising medical dramas and nurturing a close relationship with my sofa and blankets. So I check that out for a little while like it’s some kind of movie: The About to Pass Out Show, starring stair-stepper person one through ten.