And the truth is I’ve never had a real friend. A best friend, not just a condo friend.
I think, partly it’s because of my secret-keeping. I think the thing about having a best friend is that you don’t have any secrets, at least not from each other.
Most girls I know, and even boys I know, have one really, really important friend
that rises above all the others who are just regular friends.
When Ruby was just five years old her mum left her at home alone late at night. Mum has gone with her new husband and stepdad to Ruby to rob a convenience store. Guns were involved, the man fled but mum stayed beside the dying teenager. Jump forward six years and Ruby now lives with her aunt and they make a weekly visit to the prison. Ruby was so young when all this happened, but she has fragments of memory. More than this, though, she deeply misses her mother. She names her aunt Matoo - meaning second mum. Ruby learns it is best to keep all of this a secret, so she lives two lives - Ruby on the outside and Ruby on the inside. Mum will be in prison for 25 years and so Ruby will be aged 31 when she is released.
Ruby works hard to be a 'good student' and to make sense of the world. She has one friend a girl named Kristin but even Ruby knows this girl is not really a true friend. Over the summer Ruby meets Margalit and it seems she might have found that longed for true friend but navigating a friendship is new territory for Ruby and she is terrified she will 'mess it up'.
I started this book yesterday on a bus trip and completed it this morning. I already knew some of the plot which at first distracted me but then I reached the best plot twist ever! I cannot spoil this but all my worry about Ruby and her precious new friendship evaporated.
Bookseller blurb: Ruby's mom is in prison, and to tell anyone the truth is to risk true friendship in this novel that accurately and sensitively addresses a subject too often overlooked-from the author ofThe Summer Before Boys. Eleven-year-old Ruby Danes is about to start middle school, and only her aunt knows her deepest, darkest, secret: her mother is in prison. Then Margalit Tipps moves into Ruby's condo complex, and the two immediately hit it off. Ruby thinks she's found her first true-blue friend-but can she tell Margalit the truth about her mom? Maybe not. Because it turns out that Margalit's family history seems closely connected to the very event that put her mother in prison, and if Ruby comes clean, she could lose everything she cares about most.
Hopefully your students who read this book will not have had the same experience of weekly visits to a prison or correctional facility or jail but sadly this is a
reality for some children. I used to be a Teacher-Librarian in a town with a maximum security jail. There are parts of this story that will break your heart but I promise the ending will help heal it.
Here are some text quotes to give you a flavour of this heartfelt first person narrative.
We put all our belongings in a locker, showed our IDs. But we still had to go through all the security: the metal detectors, the wand search, the hand stamp, the gated doors, the big black bars, the hand stamp check, the sign-in, more bars, and finally we got to the visitors’ room where we were assigned to a table.
So lying in the dark, I try to smile. I force my mouth to turn up at the corners. I think I am smiling and I wonder what my mother is doing. She is in her cell by now, the steel bars pulled shut and locked. Maybe she is asleep. Maybe she is thinking about me. I try to smile but I feel the wetness leaking out of my eyes and dripping down my cheeks onto my pillow. I miss my mother so much.
I’m sure it’s raining in Bedford Hills, too, and that thought comes into my head but I know if my mother is in her cell, she can’t see it. I wonder if she can hear it. I wonder if there are other ways to know if it’s raining. Can she hear it? Do the COs come into work and talk about the weather? What is it like not to see the sky when you wake up in the morning?
I rack my brain. I consider every possibility for how to live with this terrible truth and not lose my very first, very best friend. For a crazy second, I want to call my mom—which, of course, I know I can’t do—like I used to when I was little. I want her to put her arms around me and make everything all right. Or at least tell me what to do. And then I realize my mother can’t fix anything. Because she’s the one who broke it.
The officer behind the glass stamps my hand with an invisible stamp. Today it is the right hand. Yesterday must have been left. I am not sure why they switch it every day, but I am sure it has something to do with preventing the prisoners from getting out. Or the wrong people from coming in. ... Here there is a little machine that you have to put your hand under and suddenly, there it is, the glowing stamp they just put on your skin. I used to think that was so cool, so magical. Not anymore.
Visitors are not allowed to wear green, but that’s not a problem for me. I’ve made sure I don’t own one green thing. Not a shirt, or a sweater, a sweatshirt, or pants. Not even green socks.
A deeply compassionate exploration of an experience underrepresented in children’s literature but overrepresented in the real world. Kirkus
Australian readers may not be familiar with the game Ruby plays with her friend - carrom. It is a board game. Read more here. Also, you will want to read one of my favourite books - Sarah, Plain and Tall.
Here are some other books I have read with jail settings:
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