Ruby on the Outside

Zusatztext "Sensitively handled and emotionally impactful! this novel is especially a must-have for libraries that serve children of incarcerated parents." Informationen zum Autor Nora Raleigh Baskin is the ALA Schneider Family Book Award–winning author of Anything But Typical . She was chosen as a Publishers Weekly Flying Start for her novel What Every Girl (Except Me) Knows , and has since written a number of novels for middle graders and teens, including The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah , The Summer Before Boys , and Ruby on the Outside . Nora lives with her family in Connecticut. Visit her at NoraBaskin.com. Klappentext Eleven-year-old Ruby Danes has a real best friend for the first time ever, but agonizes over whether or not to tell her a secret she has never shared with anyone--that her mother has been in prison since Ruby was five--and over whether to express her anger to her mother.Ruby on the Outside Chapter One It’s all she’s known her whole life, Matoo explains to her friends on the phone when she thinks I can’t hear her. “Ruby doesn’t remember anything different, so for her it’s normal,” she says about me. But Matoo is wrong. My dog, Loulou, might not know what it’s like to walk off a leash, to walk free and choose where she wants to stop and smell and when she’s done, and then decide for herself to mosey over to the next interesting spot and sniff, or not. She might not have any memory of running around outside without a collar around her neck. But that doesn’t mean she likes it this way. You can not know any better and still know you don’t like something. “C’mon, both of you,” Matoo says to me and Loulou. “We’ve got to get back inside. It’s so hot out here and I should start dinner.” I hate to do it, but I tug on Loulou’s collar so she knows it’s time to go in. She lifts her head and looks at me, because I am the one holding the other end of this leash. I am the one who can make her come when I want to, and she knows it. I’ll never know what she’s really thinking or what she smells in the grass, or those leaves, or the side of the building, but I can tell she doesn’t want to go inside yet and I feel guilty making her. Except it is hot out here, I do agree. And I am pretty hungry, come to think of it, so I give her little yank. Loulou is straining her head toward some tuft of grass, locking her hind legs and gripping her claws into the ground so she can get one last, good inhale. “Let’s go, Loulou. There’s nothing there,” I say. Nothing that I can see anyway. But just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. And just because you don’t remember something doesn’t mean you don’t miss it. And just because you are used to something doesn’t mean it’s normal. So I give Loulou a little more time to sniff around and I know she appreciates it. When I was little, I didn’t understand. Every time we visited my mother in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, I expected she was coming home with us. “Not this time,” my mother said. “But I’ll be home soon. I promise. Soon.” So, I thought, next time. Next time is long enough to be soon. But each time, my mother said again, “Not yet. Not this time, sweetheart. But soon, I promise. Don’t forget I love you. I will always be here for you. I will always be your mother.” I didn’t know why she was saying that. Of course she was my mother. I just wanted her to come home already. So maybe this visit was “soon” or maybe this was the time we would all walk out together. If not this week, then next, or the next. Or the next. After a while, Matoo started warning me before we eve...

Product details

• Authors: Nora Raleigh Baskin
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster USA
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 8 to 12
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.06.2016
• EAN: 9781442485044
• ISBN: 978-1-4424-8504-4
• No. of pages: 176
• Subjects: Children's and young people's books; Fiction > Narrative literature