Really Rubie: A Diary
Maddie Frost
Walker Books

Eleven year old Rubie Fox and her best friend Riley Fisher are about to go off to Camp Preview, expecting to spend the best summer ever together in the all girls’ camp. They co-create the TUCE (The Ultimate Camp Experience) TRUCE- – a list of the five things they will do together: 1) Make friendship bracelets, 2) Go water tubing, 3) Do the talent show, 4) Eat s’mores by a fire, 5) First kiss at the dance. The day before they leave though, these plans are thwarted when Riley calls to say she can’t go. She’d been trying out her mum’s high heels, fallen over and broken her ankle. Suddenly Rubie doesn’t want to go either but despite her best efforts to get out of it, go she must. However she makes a pact with Riley not to do any of the things on the TRUCE list; those will be saved for the following year. Riley gives her a sparkly item of clothing to take; it’s purpose being to don for the final dance.

Once at camp everybody seems to know everybody else and Riley’s absence is emphasised by the empty bunk bed next to Rubie’s in the Oak cabin, the one she’s to share with twins from France (and later, she discovers, also with Riley’s fashionista cousin, Kat.) Rubie decides to spend all her time in the cabin and definitely not go to the dance, but a bedtime pep-talk from Jim the Duck, her much loved stuffed chicken, inspires Rubie to set herself a ‘teeny-weeny’ goal. She should make a real friend and in so doing experience something positive.

The following day activities begin: archery, horse-riding and art for Rubie. At art she meets ‘comic girl’, fellow lover of both art and grilled cheese, who also has divorced parents and is feeling ill at ease at the camp. Her name is Eliza Sparrow, they start to co-create a comic and the two rapidly become firm friends. Soon though that TUCE TRUCE promise re-emerges, first with the gift of a friendship bracelet by Eliza and Rubie feels conflicted.

All sorts of shenanigans follow and Rubie discovers how to handle embarrassment, jealousy, being honest and being true to herself. Assuredly she feels different on her return home.

Amusingly told in diary format with black-and-white doodles on every spread, this is candid, cleverly presented and spot on for those around Rubie’s age.