Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything (review)

When last readers saw her (Ruby Lu, Brave and True, BCCB 4/04), Ruby Lu was welcoming her cousin Flying Duck from China, happy to have a kindred spirit at last. She is just as pleased now that Flying Duck is living with her, and her cousin's deafness just makes her additionally glamorous to Ruby Lu ("Having a cousin from China who was deaf was as good as having a cousin who had a third eye in the middle of her forehead"). Of course, some things are sticky—Ruby Lu does get a bit annoyed that, since the arrival of the Chinese-speaking relatives, nobody speaks English at home anymore, that baby brother Oscar loves Flying Duck more than Ruby, and that her neighbor Emma doesn't know the difference between "alien" as in someone from China versus "alien" as in someone from outer space. The irrepressible Ruby Lu can't be thwarted for long, though, and her exuberance manages to pull her through all sorts of nasty developments—swim lessons, for instance, and summer school, since she has been doing all of Flying Duck's ESL homework for her instead of her own. Look maintains a joyously manic pace throughout Ruby Lu's adventures, artfully dropping plot threads as Ruby thinks she has skirted their difficulties only to bring them back into the mix later for maximum effect. Wilsdorf's copious black-and-white spot art is sassy and irreverent, and there's an additional flip-book image of a posing Ruby in the lower right corner of the pages. Though Ruby invites favorable comparison with Junie B. Jones, Judy Moody, and Ramona, her charm, especially as it is threaded through with a funky multicultural sense of style and play, is unique. Keep 'em coming!