Ruby Lost and Found
-
-
4.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $8.99
Publisher Description
For fans of Kelly Yang and Rebecca Stead, this touching middle grade novel maps one girl’s quest to remember her grandfather through his scavenger hunts; reconnect with her family; and fight for her community in her rapidly changing hometown. Winner of the APALA Youth Literature Award!
Thanks to her Ye-Ye’s epic scavenger hunts, thirteen-year-old Ruby Chu knows San Francisco like the back of her hand. But after his death, she feels lost, and it seems like everyone—from her best friends to her older sister—is abandoning her.
After Ruby gets in major trouble at school, her parents decide she has to spend the summer at a local senior center with her grandmother, Nai-Nai, and Nai-Nai’s friends for company. When a new boy from Ruby’s grade, Liam Yeung, starts showing up too, Ruby’s humiliation is complete.
But Nai-Nai, her friends, and Liam all surprise Ruby. She finds herself working with Liam, who might not be as annoying as he seems, to help save a historic Chinatown bakery that’s being priced out of the neighborhood. And alongside Nai-Nai, who is keeping a secret that threatens to change everything, Ruby retraces Ye-Ye’s scavenger hunt maps in an attempt to find a way out of her grief—and maybe even find herself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In an affecting contemporary novel from Li (Clues to the Universe), Chinese American Ruby Chu, 13, struggles to process the death of her beloved paternal grandfather, Ye-Ye; her sister's impending departure for college; and the splintering of her friend group. After Ruby gets in trouble for ditching school, her parents decide that she will spend summer weekdays and weeknights with her Nai-Nai, who lives near San Francisco's Chinatown. Despite some initial awkwardness, Ruby finds comfort and stability in the routine of visiting Nai-Nai's friends at the senior recreation center, where she also befriends schoolmate Liam Yeung. But the news that May's Bakery—a Chinatown institution as well as a beloved spot for Ruby and Ye-Ye—may sell to developers, and Nai-Nai's worsening memory, threaten Ruby's fragile peace. Interspersing the present-day narrative with past scenes of Ruby and Ye-Ye's time together, Li balances youthful optimism as Ruby and Liam seek to save the bakery with harder realities as Ruby contends with her guilt about Ye-Ye's death and her own grief. It's an economically told, emotionally driven story that deftly incorporates multiple strands—around community care, gentrification, and the messy parts of familial change—while representing an inclusive Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking Chinatown community. Ages 8–12.
