Swindells, Robert: Ruby Tanya
The Story:
Ruby Tanya and Asra are best friends. Asra, her Muslim family and some other families escaped from their country to England .The people in England don’t like them very much. Ruby Tanya is from England and her father is against foreigners. This is a difficult basis for a friendship.
Their friendship is in danger, when a bomb goes off at their school and kills one of the student teachers, but the worst is yet to come: All the Muslim kids aren’t at school on this day!! So the asylum-seekers are the prime suspects to have planted the bomb!!!
One day Ruby Tanya finds a folder from her father with an appeal on it. The appeal says that the asylum-seekers should be deported. Her father is starting a campaign against the asylum-seekers and also her best friend!!! The campaign is very successful and the asylum seekers have to leave. But in the last minute Asra runs away so the others have to go without her. Asra hides herself in an abandoned house and Ruby Tanya helps her. Asra and Ruby Tanya try to find out who has planted the bomb. They make a plan to stop all the madness, but then something unexpected happens and makes the whole story even more terrifying…
I think the book is very good, but it’s not so easy to read. The book describes a very realistic situation, because foreigners are very often blamed for all the mistakes we make…
But I think that there should be quotation marks in the book, because there aren’t any and so it’s very difficult to know who says what.
Robert Swindells: Ruby Tanya
Signatur: FE.J/SWI
Rating: ***
Pages: 246
Topic: Friendship, drama, racism;
Reading age: 12 – 15
© Theresa Kodolitsch, 5B (Sept. 2008)