Ruby on the Outside by Nora Raleigh Baskin

Ruby on the Outside by Nora Raleigh Baskin is about a young girl named Ruby who lives with her aunt because her mother is in prison. She visits her mother in prison and it is a frightening experience that she has had to get used to. Ruby has to live without being able to call her mother on the phone, without having her mother to tuck her in at night, or to talk to when she is worried. She has also learned to live with the secret that her mother is in prison. Living with a secret like that, keeping it on the inside is very difficult. Ruby's worlds collide when she meets Margalit who is new in her apartment complex. Ruby thinks she has finally found a best friend, but will her secret and her mother's past make that impossible?

One of the reasons I think reading is so important is because it helps us to understand people who have different life experiences than we have had. We get a chance to be inside their head and know what it might feel like to have the problems they have. This insight allows us to be sympathetic to other peoples' problems. Ruby on the Outside does just this, beautifully.

Mrs. Castro