RUBY

by Michael Emberley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1990

A delightful modern take-off on Red Riding Hood: Ruby, a mouse, is taking some newly baked cheese pie to her granny--a journey endangered not only by hilariously depicted urban blight and its denizens (skateboarding rabbits, the odd body sprawled across a doorway) and the suave eat against whom she's been warned (he saves her from a rough-spoken street reptile--though, when the competition is verbal, Ruby gives as good as she gets--then hops a taxi to Granny's), but also by Ruby's own predilection for reading as she walks. The cat never has a chance: Ruby phones Granny's mastiff friend; and by the time she makes it to Granny's apartment, the cat has come to an appropriate end. A deft, cartoon-like style to rival Stevenson's or Marshall's; dozens of imaginative comic details (the animal caricatures of city dwellers going doggedly about their business are especially wonderful); and Emberley's brisk, pungent telling make this one of the year's most deliciously amusing picture books.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1990

Categories: CHILDREN'S