Ruby Holler

• Genre: Fiction; middle-grade adventure
• Originally Published: 2002
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 660L; grades 3-7
• Structure/Length: 66 chapters; approx. 310 pages; approx. 5 hours, 7 minutes on audio
• Protagonist and Central Conflict: Dallas and Florida, 13-year-old twins, have been shuttled from foster home to foster home, but they are always returned to Boxton Creek Home orphanage. When Tiller and Sairy Morey, an older couple who want to foster children for the summer as travel companions, take in Dallas and Florida, the twins are skeptical that this time will be any different. Tiller and Sairy take them home to Ruby Holler and propose they go on separate adventures—Tiller and Florida on a rafting trip and Sairy and Dallas to explore an island. With the help of their neighbor, Z, they prepare for their trips, uncover a robbery, and learn to trust again.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Foster home abuse and neglect

Sharon Creech, Author

• Bio: Born 1945; award-winning children’s author; born in Ohio; has one sister and three brothers; became interested in storytelling after taking literature and writing courses; taught secondary school English and writing in England and Switzerland; Absolutely Normal Chaos, her first children’s novel, was published only in the United Kingdom; her first American-published book, Walk Two Moons, won the Newbery Medal in 1995; winner of the Carnegie Medal for British children’s books; first person to win both the American Newbery Medal and the British Carnegie
• Other Works: Absolutely Normal Chaos (1990); Walk Two Moons (1994); Chasing Redbird (1997); The Wanderer (2000); Heartbeat (2004); Hate That Cat (2008)
• Awards: Carnegie Medal (2002)