fiction favorites…Ruby Redfort Look Into My Eyes

Ruby Redfort Look Into My Eyes, by Lauren Child

“I am looking for Ruby Redfort,” said the voice.
“Well, you found her,” replied Ruby.
“Good.  So now that I’ve found you, all you’ve got to do is find me.”
“Excuse me?” said Ruby. “What is this, a quiz?”
“Well,” the voice said, “a little bird told me that you notice everything — but do you notice everything Ruby Red?”
“The name’s Ruby Redfort.” Ruby didn’t like her name to be messed with.
“As I was saying,” continued the voice, “I hear that you are quite the code cracker, that you are capable of noticing the smallest things, the tiny details and how they connect.  I bet you can see when something is plumb square in the wrong place, while everyone else just walks on by. You can see that something ordinary might mean something extraordinary once it’s put in context.  Am I right?”
“I can crack a code,” said Ruby struggling to sound more confident than she felt.
“Good,” said the voice, and the line went dead.
“So what’s the code, buster?” said Ruby to no one but herself.  She slowly put down the receiver.
Now what? 

If you’ve read the entertaining Clarice Bean novels by Lauren Child, you’ll be quite familiar with the name Ruby Redfort.  Ruby is a detective extraordinaire, and she is Clarice’s hero for certain sure.  Now, Child has written the first Ruby Redfort saga so that we, too, can be enthralled by the amazing, the ingenious, the one-and-only — Ruby Redfort!

But you don’t need to have read the Clarice Bean books to enjoy this one. 

Ruby is a brilliant child, an exceptionally astute code-breaker, a girl with stunning powers of observation.  It takes all her skills as well as her incredible pluck, a few way-cool top-secret spy gadgets, and the loyal assistance of her good pal Clancy Crew, to crack this case.  It all begins when the entire belongings of the Redfort household go missing at once — including the housekeeper!  Add some strange phone calls, a mysterious new butler, a hush-hush spy agency, the arrival of a huge shipment of gold, and a precious jade artifact, and Ruby finds herself hip deep in an ocean of trouble.  How will she survive, rescue Mrs. Digby, and foil the bad guys?  

Almost 400 fast-reading pages are filled with quirky characters, puzzling discoveries, and Ruby’s breezy, cool investigations.  Ruby is an incredibly independent, plucky heroine; it’s clear as day why Clarice Bean idolizes her so!  And that’s not all folks!  Included in these pages is a vigenere cipher to attempt to crack yourselves, and a 99-second Spectrum Agency Test that you can take to see if you measure up to the likes of Ruby Redfort!

Summer is coming; here’s a book that’s a blast to read.  Great choice for the beach vacation, road trip, or too-hot-to-move days ahead.  Ages 10 and up.  Probably a tad more appealing to girls with Ruby as the star of the show…non-picky boys could like it too, with plenty of sinister fellows, guns, and spy stuff.

Here’s the Amazon link:Ruby Redfort Look Into My Eyes