The Center of Everything

madelinelulu - I would recommend this book for sixth graders and up because it contains characters that middle school students can really relate to. The book tells the story of 11 year old Ruby Pepperdine who feels like her whole world is turning upside down. The book follows her as she struggles with her feelings that nothing is the way it is supposed to be. She is deeply sad because her grandmother has died and she feels like she let her down because she didn't understand her last words to her which were "listen, its all coming together". She also finds herself caught between between two friends. Her best friend Lucy isn't even talking to her because of her new friendship with a boy named Nero. But that friendship isn't going very well either. Somehow Ruby decides that if she can just read her winning essay at the town parade the wish she makes when she turns 12 will make everything right again. The story is written from the perspective of a third person narrator which made it a little difficult for me to really connect to Ruby as much as I might I have if it was written from her point of view. But I liked the way the author followed Ruby's personal journey as she tries to make some sense of her world by figuring out what her grandmother was trying to tell her .

January 7, 2013
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.