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For Ruby Pepperdine, the "center of everything" is on the rooftop of Pepperdine Motors in her donut-obsessed town of Bunning, New Hampshire, stargazing from the circle of her grandmother Gigi's hug. That's how everything is supposed to be - until Ruby messes up and things spin out of control. But she has one last hope. It all depends on what happens on Bunning Day, when the entire town will hear Ruby read her winning essay. And it depends on her twelfth birthday wish - unless she messes that up too. Can Ruby's wish set everything straight in her topsy-turvy world?
"Starred Review. Throughout this slim, affecting novel, Urban treats Ruby's bewilderment with care and gracefully reinforces the value of friends, family, and community." - Booklist
"The poignancy that characterized Urban's A Crooked Kind of Perfect and Hound Dog True is also present in this novel about wishes and regret." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Ruby's a credible heroine, and her response to her grandmother's death rings true. Repetitive motifs of circles, centers and holes reinforce the theme of loss. A poignant, finely wrought exploration of grief." - Kirkus
This information about The Center of Everything was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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