Bottom line: An Asian American Ramona
Author: Lenore Look
Lexile measure: 640
Language: Mention of "four letter words, bad ones". Also, there are some words (not bad ones) in transliterated Chinese .
Violence: None.
Big Kid Mature Topics: Bullying (verbal name calling making fun of sweaters, not violent or threatening). The bully gets sick with pneumonia and is hospitalized. The seven year old protagonist drives a car. The story talks about immigrant relatives in a negative, stereotypical way--but this is in the context of the protagonist naming the reasons she doesn't want them to come to the US, and it all melts away in the end. There are also a lot of elements of Cantonese American culture that young kids from other cultures might not be familiar with.
Illustrations: Black and white shaded drawings, every few pages.
Plot: moderately complex.
Ruby is one of our favorite protagonists. Maybe its because we get to use our very limited Cantonese and knowledge of Chinese culture, but I suspect its also because Ruby is so real and yet so funny. Even DS (4) thinks so. She reminds me of Ramona and Judy Moody and Clementine all wrapped into one.
A word of caution: Very young readers may not understand the gravity of getting into a real car and driving it for real with a pretend driver's license. DS was very blown away when I told him that he was not allowed under and circumstances to drive our car.
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