The Center of Everything

It’s possible to write a quiet, sweet book about pre-teens’ exploration of big ideas that will be fun and engaging for actual pre-teens. Wendy Mass does it fairly consistently. This, sadly, felt like it was more effective as an adult comfort read. Of course, I could be wrong! If you know kids who loved it, please tell me; it’s certainly a well-written, wholesome read that would be a good addition to libraries if students like it more than I predict. - See more at: http://www.parenthetical.net/2013/10/26/review-the-center-of-everything-by-linda...

First line:
"In the beginning, there was the donut."

Regret is a curious thing. Adults often harbor regrets, but in the short life of a young child, regret is a foreign feeling; and so, when Ruby Pepperdine's 12-year-old life is peppered with both loss and regret, she does not feel the sad and wistful feeling that adults know and understand; she feels a topsy-turvy feeling - a feeling that something has thrown off the balance in her circle of life. Circles are something that Ruby knows a bit about, living as she does in Bunning, New Hampshire, the one-time home of Captain Bunning, inventor of the hole in the donut.

Set entirely within one day and employing flashbacks to fill in the back story, The Center of Everything is a short and show more quirky, middle-grade novel that deals with the sensitive topics of death and regret in an entertaining, hopeful and even humorous manner,

"Ruby should move on to the math books. She really should. But she can't help but be a little curious. "Who decided?"

"Nobody knows for sure. That's what bugs me. Some medieval guys discovered this list and said was based on a bunch of other lists from some ancient guys, including ..." Nero flips to the introduction. "Including a historian dude called Herodotus and another guy name Callimachus, but nobody knows who really decided what the Seven Wonders are. So how come we're all supposed to just say, 'Yeah, okay. Those are the Seven Wonders.' What if there was something else around that Callimachus just didn't like? Some kind of awesome tomb or statue or something that was made by one of his enemies, so he left it off the list?"

This is exactly the kind of questions that gets Nero DeNiro in so much trouble at school -- the kind of questions that teachers can't answer.
...

"Also, says Nero, "how come nobody gets named Callimachus anymore?""

Ruby tries to make sense of her new world - without her grandmother, with a possible new friend named Nero, a possibly angry, old friend named Lucy, and a wish scheduled to come true today, on Bunning Day at the Bunning Day Parade where Ruby, the Bunning Day Essay Girl, is scheduled to read her prize-winning essay from a float in the parade. Ever since her quarter sailed through the donut hole in the Captain Cornelius Bunning bronze statue, Ruby has been waiting for this day. According to tradition, if her quarter went through the hole on her birthday, and she said her wish the proper number of times, it should come true on Bunning Day. It should. It's fate. It's destiny. But can it come true? Has she done it correctly? What if she wished for the wrong thing?

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People have criticized this book as being, "yet another dead grandparent book." To those critics, I have two responses. First, what's wrong with writing a children's book about a common childhood experience? I don't see anyone out there saying, "Ug! Not another book about starting school." Second, this book is about so much more than the loss of a grandparent. It's about friendship, adolescence, young love, and just about the greatest quirky small town in the history of quirky small towns. So rather than dismiss The Center of Everything, I want to sing its praises. This is the best book for kids published in 2013. I think it deserves this year's Newbery Award.

For a short, middle-grade novel, "The Center of Everything" is an unusually philosophical entry. And I mean that in a good way.
Ruby Pepperdine has lost her beloved grandmother, Gigi. She doesn't know how to grieve, and she is particularly bothered that the last thing Gigi said to her, when Gigi's was prone to nonsensical rambling, was "Listen!" And Ruby didn't listen. Now she has made a wish to right the wrongs of the past, and she superstitiously believes her wish will be granted, as long as she does the things she is supposed to do. But how does she know what she is supposed to do? She has her family, her best friend, Lucy, and a new friend, who the reader is led to believe may be future boyfriend material, Nero. They all try to help show more her in their own ways. But Ruby is not merely trying to figure out how to grieve. Though she doesn't realize it herself, she is trying to figure out what her philosophy of life is.
I only had one problem with this book: The entire tale is written in present tense, but the events of each chapter jump around in time. Sometimes we're reading about things from the past... different points in the past. And sometimes the present. But regardless, it is all told in present tense. At times I found this a little confusing. show less

Wishes, parades, constellations, donuts, and time travel all cross Ruby Pepperdine's mind as she tries to come to grips with the death of her beloved grandma Gigi.

If you're a fan of Rebecca Stead (whose book [b:When You Reach Me|5310515|When You Reach Me|Rebecca Stead|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320395542s/5310515.jpg|6608018] gets a mention in the story alongside [b:A Wrinkle In Time|18131|A Wrinkle in Time (Time, #1)|Madeleine L'Engle|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1329061522s/18131.jpg|948387]), I can pretty much guarantee that this book will touch you. Like Stead's books, it's emotional, intelligent, a little complicated in its plotting (in a way that keeps you turning the pages trying to figure it out), and told efficiently in show more about 200 pages. I read it in one sitting. Here are some random thoughts before I write a real review:

How can you not love a kid named Nero DeNiro?

The themes of listening and coming together, reminded me of "Only connect!" from one of my favorite novels E.M. Forster's [b:Howard's End|9810105|Howard's End|E.M. Forster|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1291346241s/9810105.jpg|1902726].

All the second-person narration, like, "If you were Ruby...," was very interesting, I thought. I've seen it used before for humorous effect in Lemony Snicket and some other books, but it was used here not for fun or absurdity or breaking the fourth wall, but for connecting (only connect!) the reader more deeply to Ruby and her journey.

Can you win the Newbery if you mention the Newbery in your book? We shall see! I know it's only March, but this book has jumped to #1 in my heart for 2013. show less

First of all, let me begin by saying that my review cannot even begin to do Linda Urban's new book justice. Perhaps if I could string together words, turned into sentences plump with perfection (or in Linda's style, pared down to perfection), I could. That's my caveat emperor: I cannot convey emotions and turns of events with the genius turn of the pen that is Linda's gift to the world.

That said: People, listen.

This book is incredible. Delightful. Delish.

A perfectly packaged, 200 pager with chapters as inviting as a pan of apple crisp. At the center of everything is Ruby - Ruby Pepperdine, selected as this year's Essay Girl for her town's annual Bunning Day Parade. Radiating out from this premise are all sorts of wonderful show more characters, some with big parts to play, such as her grandmother Gigi and her friends Lucy and Nero DiNero, and others perhaps described as part of a parade scene only, but all make up parts of the whole. This is a big novel, in a qualitative sense (and quantum one): the importance of wishes, traditions, supposed tos and not supposed tos, signs, regrets, destiny, and donuts:

You get this idea of what something is like, and that gets in the way of finding out what it's really like. - Ruby Pepperdine

The Center of Everything packs it all in. It is truly the real deal. It sings, it sighs, it attempts to get right to the heart of the matter without ever feeling too heavy-handed or contrived. Nothing is forced.

Linda absolutely nails it.

Everything that she attempts to do in this gem of a novel, she does. Her story flows effortlessly and we, the readers, are better for having read her words, strung together out of randomness to create a story destined to be told. A story at the center of it all.

If I could give it six stars, I would. It is deserving of a whole new constellation, or at the very least, a shiny shiny shiny sticker. show less

I know that everyone really enjoyed this book. It's not that I didn't, I just wasn't completely pulled in right away. Maybe I just didn't relax into the book, or maybe I was looking for something special to happen just like Ruby was throughout the book. Sometimes the "something special" or the wish you have, comes true without you even realizing it. Sometimes it is just simply there. I could relate a lot with Ruby, wanting everything to be perfect, doing what you're told, saying what you should say, etc. - but wishing you could "fix" certain moments and hope that everything lines up the exact right way for it all to work and the wish to come true. This is definitely a book that will stick with me and will turn over and over in my mind. show more I guess that's what makes it great. show less