Ruby Yarrow is a 14 year old who lives in a busy, loving, chaotic family with her mum, stepdad, brother and two little stepbrothers. Ruby feels a bit like a doormat - she has to help out in the family a lot while her brother doesn't. He wins lots of prizes at school and she has a learning difficulty and needs a reader/writer to help her in exams. Ruby's surname Yarrow is at the end of the alphabet and when the roll gets called out she's always at the end and she hates it. She feels she's always at the end of the line. Not that she's a misery bag at all. She has great friends and loves clothes, fashion magazines and sewing and she's got a real knack for it. She's very keen to go on the school trip to Brazil and so gets a job to earn the money to go - works in a supermarket for an old grump, learns a bit of Portuguese, meets exchange students, doesn't get to go on the trip but stands up to her parents (gets some backbone) and starts to see herself in a much better light. There's even a bit of romance thrown in. It's about having a dream and aiming for it. But it's not sentimental, it's a great read, very real and it has a lovely upbeat tone.

Fleur Beale is the author of 'The transformation of Minna Hargreaves' shortlisted for the NZ Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2008, and many other award-winning books - she has now had 28 books published here, with some of them also being published in Australia, the US and England.

Shortlisted for New Zealand Post Children's Book Award: Senior Fiction 2010.

Paperback
20-02-2009
Random House New Zealand Ltd
9781869790707
198 x 131 mm