| Ruby Lu: Brave and True (series #1) |
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What You Need to Know:
• Ruby Lu is a happy character who is able to overcome the small challenges she faces.
• The story of Ruby Lu offers insight into family life within the Chinese culture, with specific references to food and
language. She refers to her dad as A.B.C. or American-born Chinese.
• The descriptive language and the writing style is more interesting than many books geared at this reading level.
• It can, however, be disjointed as every few chapters reveal a new issue to be tackled and resolved.
• The amount of white space, entertaining visuals (flip the pages and watch what happens to the hat in the bottom
right hand corner) and easy-to-read font size make Ruby Lu very comfortable for Reader Juniors.
• As crazy as this may sound, Ruby Lu drives herself and her baby brother to Chinese School. She makes it all the
way there and even offers a play by play on how to do it. Doubtful anyone would do it but remind your readers –
don’t try this at home! |
Sweet Series Background:
Ruby Lu is a little girl of Chinese descent who loves her life in the city but sometimes stumbles through her days, always learning a lesson along the way. Being Chinese is an important part of the series and of who Ruby Lu is, and details relating to this subject run smoothly through the story lines. For readers who enjoy the spunkiness of Judy Moody and Junie B. Jones, Ruby Lu will be a welcome addition to their bookshelves. |
Sweet Book Summary:
We learn a lot about Ruby Lu right away. She is a happy almost 8 year old who likes a lot of things like where she lives (20th Avenue South), the rain, the sunshine, the bus, her school and most of all her magic class. Tiger, her best friend, lives two blocks away and is good at making new friends, something that Ruby feels she isn’t able to do so quickly. She likes her old friends best. Tiger tells Ruby, “You never know when a friend might become another best friend” but Ruby isn’t so sure.
Ruby is also very excited about her little brother, Oscar. She makes lots of comparisons between him and her friend’s brother and gets upset when Oscar lags behind in his ability to talk. When he finally does speak, he ruins her magic show and upstages her. She works it out though, by making Oscar her assistant so they can share the stage. The book also focuses on Ruby’s adventures at Chinese School. Ruby doesn’t want to go at first, but ends up loving it. The interesting and descriptive language like “At night the rain was a lullaby of a billion grains of rice falling on the roof” and “The kitchen smelled like jook and ice cream” contribute to the uniqueness of this story. |
Author: Lenore Look Illustrator: Anne Wilsdorf Published: 2006, 112 pages
Themes: Ethnicity/Culture, Family, Friendship, School, Urban |
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