Ruby in the Sky by Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo

With the court date looming, Ruby attempts to push aside the noise and invisibly navigate sixth grade. However, everything changes when her mother is wrongly arrested after an altercation with an abusive boss. But Ruby knows the drill- don’t settle in, don’t make friends, and soon enough her mother, Dahlia, will pack them up and leave for their next forever home. The last thing Ruby wanted to do was move into yet another forever home, particularly in Vermont.

I was drawn to this book's complex characters, lyrical writing, and fresh view on what it means to be courageous. I found it utterly believable that 'tween Ruby's struggle to connect with her brash, occasionally neglectful mother would drive her to reach out to Bird Lady. Her background in law and her extensive work with refugee children informs this story, grounding it in real details. Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo's writing is breathtakingly vivid - giving readers a 'you are there' feeling of immediacy. In RUBY IN THE SKY, a parent’s courageous act upends the main character’s life.įull disclosure: I fell in love with this middle grade novel when it was submitted to me and Tricia Clasen (THE HAUNTED HOUSE PROJECT) as a Pitch Wars manuscript. This novel explores how an admirable quality like courage is more complicated than we might think.

(Mom speaks out about workplace harassment and the boss retaliates by calling the cops on her.) As tensions rise with her mother, whose trial date is drawing near,Ruby forms a tenuous friendship with the town’s reclusive Bird Lady. She doesn’t want kids asking about her past or finding out that her outspoken mother has been arrested. When Ruby and her mother move from sunny Florida to frozen Vermont, Ruby tries to stay silent and invisible at school. Ruby in the Sky is a story of the walls we hide behind, and the magic that can happen when we’re brave enough to break free.I can't wait for readers to meet Ruby Moon Hayes. Before long Ahmad and Abigail have become Ruby’s friends-and she realizes there is more to their stories than everyone knows.As ugly rumors begin to swirl around the people Ruby loves, she must make a choice: break her silence, or risk losing everything that’s come to mean so much to her. Or when she meets “the Bird Lady,” a recluse named Abigail who lives in a ramshackle shed near Ruby’s house.

She and her mother won’t be staying long in Vermont anyway, and then things can go back to the way they were before everything went wrong.But keeping to herself isn’t easy when Ahmad Saleem, a Syrian refugee, decides he’s her new best friend. Ruby just wants to stay as silent and invisible as a new moon in the frozen sky. And she definitely does not want to make any friends. She does not want them to know her mother has been arrested. Twelve-year-old Ruby Moon Hayes does not want her new classmates to ask about her father.

Ruby in the Sky by Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo