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Summary
Summary
Spring 2013 Kids' Indie Next List
For Ruby Pepperdine, the "center of everything" is on the rooftop of Pepperdine Motors in her donut-obsessed town of Bunning, New Hampshire, stargazing from the circle of her grandmother Gigi's hug. That's how everything is supposed to be--until Ruby messes up and things spin out of control. But she has one last hope. It all depends on what happens on Bunning Day, when the entire town will hear Ruby read her winning essay. And it depends on her twelfth birthday wish--unless she messes that up too. Can Ruby's wish set everything straight in her topsy-turvy world?
Author Notes
Linda Urban 's debut novel, A Crooked Kind of Perfect , was selected for many best books lists and was nominated for twenty state awards. Her novel Hound Dog True received four starred reviews and was named a Kirkus Best Book of 2011. A former bookseller, she lives in Montpelier, Vermont, with her family.Visit her website at www.lindaurbanbooks.com.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The poignancy that characterized Urban's A Crooked Kind of Perfect and Hound Dog True is also present in this novel about wishes and regret. Months after her grandmother's death, 12-year-old Ruby Pepperdine composes a winning essay honoring her New Hampshire town's namesake: Capt. Cornelius Bunning, inventor of the doughnut. Ruby should be ecstatic that she gets to read her essay in front of the whole community on Bunning Day, but her mind is on other things, especially how she didn't listen to her grandmother's final words before she died. Ruby thinks that maybe if she wishes hard enough, "everything will be back to how it is supposed to be," but making a wish the right way is a tricky business. In a story whose winding plot echoes the doughnut shape that fascinates Ruby, Urban traces how Ruby discovers connections among dissimilar phenomena, including the nature of relativity, everyday sounds, and being part of a community. Ruby's large imagination and even bigger heart are beautifully evoked as the sixth-grader finds a way to keep the memory of her grandmother alive. Ages 9-12. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Every year, the sixth graders at Bunning Elementary School in southern New Hampshire create a color wheel. Their art teacher, Mrs. Thomas, gives basic instructions: include twelve colors, put them in order, and identify the complementary ones. She provides a model that looks like a bicycle wheel with spokes; Ruby Pepperdine completes the assignment by making her wheel just like Mrs. Thomas's. This, Ruby believes, is what she's "supposed to do." True to character, she has figured out what is expected of her and met, but not exceeded, those expectations. But then she spies Nero DeNiro's cleverly executed wheel and begins to wonder: "What if there is no such thing as supposed to'?" Literally and metaphorically, Ruby colors within the lines; Nero goes outside the boundaries. Ruby begins to ponder her own life and her role as the "good girl" and looks for divine help (through a complicated traditional birthday wish) for guidance. The different segments of Ruby's life, like those in the color wheel, had a center: her beloved, but recently deceased, grandmother. But in an intriguing backstory that plays out almost entirely during the town's annual parade, Ruby realizes that she can become a center for others. By turns thought-provoking, humorous, and poignant, Ruby's story introduces a multi-faceted character well worth meeting. betty carter (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* After opening with a tall (and rather round) tale about the stormy origins of the doughnut, Urban's latest middle-grade novel zeros in on a grieving 12-year-old girl in a New Hampshire town founded by doughnut inventor Captain Bunning in 1847. As part of the annual Bunning Day parade, Ruby Pepperdine waits to give a speech to honor the captain. And this wait stretches for almost the entire book, for Urban has deftly structured Ruby's story as a series of flashbacks. While the parade proceeds and Ruby shuffles through her index cards, which have fallen out of order, her memories of recent and disquieting incidents come forward. As with some of Sharon Creech's novels, the reasons behind the protagonist's grief and confusion are revealed gradually. Urban also conveys the way mourning can alter one's sense of time and normalcy. Ruby's grandmother has died, and it soon becomes apparent that their last exchange was deeply upsetting to Ruby. She hopes to somehow remedy that with a wish she has earned through a town tradition the tossing of a quarter through the bronze doughnut held aloft by the town's Captain Bunning statue. Throughout this slim, affecting novel, Urban treats Ruby's bewilderment with care and gracefully reinforces the value of friends, family, and community.--Nolan, Abby Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
GRANDPARENTS often appear in children's literature just so they can be taken away. At times, death provides a largely unearned "teachable moment," while at others it conjures a powerful approximation of grief. Linda Urban's new novel, "The Center of Everything," uses the premise of a grandparent's death in a surprising way, exploring not only grief but also its occasional companions, anxiety and guilt. On Sunday nights, Ruby Pepperdine and her grandmother Gigi used to climb the staircase to the flat roof of Pepper-dine Motors in the town of Bunning, N.H., to look at the stars. Though her grandmother tells her the Earth moves around the sun, which is itself a star "moving around in a dizzying, centerless space," Ruby believes that the opposite is true, too, and that "the center of everything was right here in Bunning, on top of Pepperdine Motors, safe in the circle of Gigi's hug." And why shouldn't she believe it? Urban creates a homey, funny, Thornton Wilderish town, in which "you can set up your seats for a parade and go off to get a balloon or a bag of doughnuts, and nobody will mess with them." Each year on Bunning Day, there's not only a big parade but also a recitation by the winner of the annual essay contest honoring Cornelius Bunning, the sea captain who (at least in this novel) invented the doughnut hole. Ruby, the current Essay Girl, has cannily figured out the winning formula: "First of all, you had to say that Cornelius Bunning was great. . . . And you might mention how glad you were to live in a town named after him. . . . It would be good if you could say something funny about doughnuts. Maybe a pun like they're 'holey original.'" If this were any other Bunning Day, the experience of standing before her town to read her essay aloud would be perfection. But just as death didn't spare Thornton Wilder's fictional New Hampshire town, Grover's Corners, neither has it spared the fictional New Hampshire town of Bunning. Months before the parade, Ruby's beloved grandmother Gigi suddenly dies right in front of Ruby: "The bony hand smacked the arm of the chair once. Twice. 'Listen.' The voice was wilder, louder. 'It's all coming together.' In between the words there was a gasping sound. 'It's all (gasp) coming (gasp)-' "Ruby kept saying the things that she had heard her family say. 'It's the medicine. It's not real. It's nothing to worry about. It's not-' "'Listen,' gasped the voice. "And then Mom was there, stepping in front of Ruby and kneeling at Gigi's feet, holding her hand." Since that terrible moment when Gigi died and Ruby was sure she hadn't listened well enough to her grandmother's final words, she's felt "out of balance," a fact she's kept from her best friend, Lucy, causing the friendship to fracture. Can a 12th-birthday wish set everything right? Ruby certainly hopes so. Bunning tradition declares that every birthday child gets a shot at sending a quarter through "the hole in Captain Bunning's bronze doughnut." When it's Ruby's turn, her quarter whizzes through, and now, she thinks, "Everything will be fixed . . . and nobody will be mad, and everything will be back to how it is supposed to be." "The Center of Everything" travels a satisfying, circular path that deliberately echoes the shape of a doughnut. But what's also doughnutlike here is the notable absence at the heart of the story. The loss of Gigi feels real, though Ruby's nagging freight of uneasiness and sense of responsibility are more unusual elements in a novel for young readers. Children are often made by their parents to feel that they're "the center of everything," and though this can create sturdy, durable egos, it can also make a child feel that her own actions have caused something dreadful to happen, and that magical thinking can fix it. Wishing has a useful place both in childhood and in this novel; but so, too, does reality, especially when rendered with this kind of sensitivity. 'Everything will be fixed, . . . and nobody will be mad, and everything will be back to how it is supposed to be.' Meg Wolitzer is the author of the middlegrade novel "The Fingertips of Duncan Dorf man," and for adults, most recently, "The Interestings."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-6-Ruby Pepperdine's best friend, Lucy, has accused her of creating a rift in their friendship, and then there's Nero DeNiro, who is causing strange new feelings in her that she doesn't really understand. Ruby finds herself wondering how she let these things happen while she waits for the Bunning Day parade to get underway. As she observes various individuals in the parade and prepares to give her winning essay on Bunning Day, she wonders how she can make everything right with her friends and family. The author delves into the chaotic world of a 12-year-old girl who is dealing with serious issues. The book is both heartwarming and humorous, and narrator Suzy Jackson does an excellent performance of Ruby as well as the various casts of family and friends. It is easy to picture the various characters. This is not a title one would recommend to reluctant readers, but it is one that faces real-life situations head-on, and offers an honest depiction of grief.-Sheila Acosta, San Antonio Public Library (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Sixth-grader Ruby Pepperdine always used to be "good at figuring out what she was supposed to do," but since her grandmother's death, she's lost the center of everything. Growing up in Bunning, N.H., Ruby always listened to her grandmother, Gigi, until the day Gigi died, and Ruby didn't listen to her. Since Ruby does what's expected, she thinks she should be back to normal after Gigi's death. For three months, she's pretended to be fine, not even telling her best friend "how out of balance she's felt." On her 12th birthday, Ruby makes a special wish that everything will be the way it's supposed to be by the time she reads her prizewinning essay at the Bunning Day Parade. But when the day arrives, Ruby wonders if there's any such thing as "supposed to." Maybe listening and connecting are a lot more important. Written in the third person, present tense, Ruby's story unfolds from her perspective on the day of the parade as she thinks back to what led to her obsessive wish to know what her grandmother tried to tell her. Ruby's a credible heroine, and her response to her grandmother's death rings true. Repetitive motifs of circles, centers and holes reinforce the theme of loss. A poignant, finely wrought exploration of grief. (Fiction. 9-12)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.