Review: Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion, by K. Tempest Bradford
Before I get into this, I want to acknowledge that I personally know Tempest since her college days at NYU. That said, Tempest is one of the most incredible women I know working in the SF field today. A huge proponent of all kinds of equality, she is the woman behind the I Challenge You to Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors for One Year challenge. She is also one of the people behind the Writing the Other workshops. I have never had a conversation with her where I did not come away with a fresh perspective.
She has now written her first middle-grade book, Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion. It’s a delightful book. Ruby is an extremely bright eleven-year-old, with an over-arching interest in bugs of any kind. She finds a bug that nobody she knows has ever seen before, and posts about it to the science group on Twitter that she has created against her parents’ wishes. As often happens in books like this, chaos ensues. Government agents appear, the online posts her family and friends make start disappearing, and her science teacher tries intimidation to get Ruby to abandon her chosen science project in favor of one the teacher thinks is appropriate for an eleven-year-old girl.
During the chaos, Ruby discovers a neighbor in distress and she and her friends get the local civic council to make a wellness call, which saves the woman’s life. Further, Ruby does a lot of evaluating f her assumptions. I won’t tell more than this, since that would ruin the book for you, but it is well worth the time to read. Delightfully, I found it in one of the libraries I have access to in both e-book and e-audiobook forms.
If you have a kid who reads at the appropriate level, or if middle-grade books are your thing (and I know there are lots of adults for whom this is true), you will enjoy this book. And, maybe, Tempest will make you think, which is always fun.
Not Just Another Grouchy Grammarian 