A mostly amusing saga of primary-school friendships with a clever pro-reading subtext
Ten-year-old Ruby Starr feels threatened when a new girl arrives in her fifth-grade class and turns everything upside down.
Ruby, a white girl with blonde, curly hair, is an ardent bibliophile who often imagines she’s a character in a book herself. Ruby’s happily ensconced in school with special girlfriends and the Unicorn Book Club she started when new kid Charlotte, also white, appears. Before Ruby realizes what’s happening, Charlotte’s invited to join the Unicorns and Ruby’s best friend seems “gaga” about the new arrival. When Charlotte eschews reading and suggests it would be fun to turn the book club into a drama club, an angry, hurt, and jealous Ruby asks Charlotte if she’s ever even read a book. Immediately regretting her words, Ruby turns to her fictional heroines for inspiration. After accidentally discovering the secret behind Charlotte’s dislike of books, Ruby eventually has a chance to redeem herself. Peppered with references to her favorite books, Ruby’s fresh, humorous, first-person, present-tense account of her fifth-grade traumas, her real and imaginary friendships, and her supportive family rings true. However, the text is frequently abruptly interrupted by Ruby’s dramatic daydreams complete with (uncredited) cartoon illustrations—a distracting and unsuccessful device. Ruby’s world is a largely white one.
A mostly amusing saga of primary-school friendships with a clever pro-reading subtext . (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4577-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Certain to steal hearts.
In this follow-up to 2020’s The One and Only Bob, Ruby the elephant is still living at Wildworld Zoological Park and Sanctuary.
She’s apprehensive about her Tuskday, a rite of passage for young elephants when she’ll give a speech in front of the rest of the herd. Luckily, she can confide in her Uncle Ivan, who is next door in Gorilla World, and Uncle Bob, the dog who lives nearby with human friend Julia. Ruby was born in an unspecified part of Africa, later ending up on display in the mall, where she met Ivan, Bob, and Julia. The unexpected arrival of someone from Ruby’s past life on the savanna revives memories both warmly nostalgic and deeply traumatic. An elephant glossary and Castelao’s charming, illustrated guide to elephant body language help immerse readers in Ruby’s world. Goofy, playful, and mischievous Ruby is fully dimensional, as she has shown her bravery during the many hardships of her young life. Applegate deftly tempers themes of grief and loss with compassion and humor as Ruby finds her place in the herd. The author’s note touches on climate change, the illegal ivory trade, and conservation efforts, but the highly emotive framing of the story through the memories of a bewildered baby elephant emphasizes the impact of lines such as “ ‘in Africa,’ I say softly, ‘there were bad people,’ ” without offering readers a nuanced understanding of the broader context that drives poaching.
Certain to steal hearts. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780063080089
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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