I have been waiting for a story featuring Ruby - and Katherine Applegate doesn’t disappoint! After hearing about Ivan and Bob, our girl Ruby takes us on another adventure this time recounting the time she spent in the African Savannah. This book will transport you and readers if all ages!

Katherine Applegate does it again. Starting with The One and Only Ivan then The One and Only Bob we now get Ruby's story in The One and Only Ruby. The difficult topics of poaching and mistreatment of animals is written with gentleness and love. The reader will understand Ruby's reticence in talking about her past and praise her for having the courage to so.

Ruby is ready for her tusk ceremony, but she isn't looking forward to it. As the day comes, she is unaware of the significance of tusks and worries recalling her early experiences with her herd in Africa. Ruby tells Ivan and Bob what happened to her mother and how she ended up in the mall enclosure with Stella before arriving at the sanctuary where they are now. Ruby's story is one of strength, sorrow, love, and encouragement, but it's also a lesson about poaching and the major environmental impacts that have resulted from it.

I read the entire series with my children, and while we all enjoyed them, we thought Ruby's story to be the most forced and childish in the beginning. The influence of Ruby's experience (and elephants alike) changes the tone of the novel and its impact on the reader as the story unfolds and she reveals her past with Ivan and Bob. This is an important story for teaching youngsters (and adults) about the environmental consequences of their behavior. We appreciated Applegate's afterword, which included elephant facts and resources. Each book in this series encourages readers to cultivate empathy and, ideally, to alter course now to aid our future.

The One and Only Ruby was such a cute and heartwarming book. I typically read children’s books with my kids, but this one I read in my own. Ruby is a spunky “teenager” who is preparing for her Tusk Day with her newfound herd of elephants. She is apprehensive of her emerging tusks because when she was in the wild, tusks meant potential harm from poachers. Ruby recounts her journey from the wild, to an elephant sanctuary in Africa, to a mall in America, and finally to a zoo where she lives with her “uncles” Ivan and Bob. Her story is sad and happy and everything in between. She has loved and lost and found her home with her friends at the zoo. She learns that family isn’t only blood, but all of the wonderful animals (and humans) she has met along the way.
Thank you to NetGalley and Katherine Applegate for an advanced copy of this book!

The One and Only Ruby by Katherine Applegate is a very sweet story about an elephant named Ruby. I instantly fell in love with Ruby and my heart broke for her, but I appreciated the life lessons she learned as she approached her Tusk Day. I highly recommend this book--especially if you have read The One and Only Ivan! Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read this book! My review is also on Goodreads.

The third book in the One and Only series is focused on Ruby's stories about her time in Africa. As always, Ivan, Bob, and Ruby's bond captivated my family's attention. Our kids had a hard time deciding which was their favorite book in this series. This book definitely has some sad parts so we want to give fair warning for any sensitive readers.

However, if you are a Katherine Applegate lover, this book does not disappoint. Once again, Applegate makes our list of best middle-grade books of 2023! Thank you for our gifted copy of this book.

I received a copy of this book through Netgalley. This is my honest review.

This book was selected for me to read by my 12 year old daughter, who loved the first two books in the series. I was really hoping that would mean that she would read it too, but weirdly no such luck on that score. Once I started reading, I realized why she likely enjoys these books. I think it's because the chapters are short and the language is fairly simple. Words that may be outside of the standard vocabulary of the target audience are defined by a character very shortly after their use, which is definitely a bonus for building vocabulary.

Even though I've never read the first two books in the series, I didn't feel like that was necessary for this story. It is all about Ruby, and any mention of Ivan and Bob really comes down to how they are connected to Ruby. I also got some background on how Ivan, Bob and Ruby all came to know each other.

If you have a hesitant reader on your hands, this book would definitely be great for them because the chapters are so short. Encouraging them to just read a chapter or two a day shouldn't yield too much resistance because of the brevity, and they may just get sucked into the story and keep reading on their own.

Overall I give The One and Only Ruby 4.174 out of 5 stars.

I love this series! Katherine Applegate is one of my favorite authors and I anxiously awaited this book release. I enjoy reading books from animals' perspectives, as I think it sheds light on our world and who we share the world with. Animals have their own special way of thinking and I think that is so fascinating.

I did tear up at some parts of this book but overall, the positive tone of the book was uplifting. I loved the story of Ruby and how she came to live with her current tribe. The ceremony was so interesting to read about.

Immediately added this book to my elementary library and so many of my students were excited to get their hands on it.

A wonderful addition to the One and Only series books by Katherine Applegate.

You can't help but cry and cheer for Ruby as she adapts to her new life. The reader will identify with Ruby's own feelings about change, loss, and acceptance.

These books are wonderfully written and I am happy to have spent time with Ruby (and other familiar faces!)

Another great story by Ms Applegate! I have loved all the books in this series and my students are going to eat this most recent one up! Thank you NetGalley for the the opportunity to read this awesome book!

Loved Ivan and Bob and enjoy sharing them with my class, but this one wasn’t as good. It felt like it was more about the author’s agenda than a fun, feel good story for kids. Really too bad, because there were so many spots that would’ve been great for teaching. I think the kids would be bored reading it though. It was really just Ruby narrating a long story of how she got to where she is and how humans want to get elephant tusks (poaching.) It was just an odd feel for a children’s book.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I am prefacing this review with the fact that I am not personally a huge fan of animal stories. That said, I read and enjoyed The One and Only Ivan and Katherine Applegate does such an outstanding job of writing from their perspective that I knew this would be good.

This story has Ruby telling Ivan and Bob how she came to America and wound up with them. As with Ivan, Ruby's story tells of the natural intelligence that elephants have and introduces readers to what their lives are like. This story also brings in some other important lessons, like how elephants are killed for their tusks, how they are forced out of their homes for peoples' entertainment, and about how we, as people, treat each other.

I highly recommend this for anyone who loved Ivan.

In each of the prior books in this trilogy, Applegate uses an immediate threat as a method for the protagonist to acknowledge and eventually work through trauma from their past. In Ivan we meet the character of Ruby, a tiny elephant who has lost her whole family and faces a life in captivity. She is an innocent who drives Ivan to act. In Bob we see a Ruby who has started to develop more personality. She's found a family and has begun to prove that she is capable of helping. And finally in this book we have Ruby as a complete character. We see her largely as a sunny, positive "kid" but we also see the trauma of her past. We see how her experiences in Africa have driven a deep fear of change into her. The threat here is less immediate. There is no abusive owner, no natural disaster. Just Ruby and her fears. In this volume Applegate completes her trifecta of the affects of trauma on a character and the ways it causes us to behave. Each book provides something different to the reader and is worth reading in it's own right. As with the other two books, this volume talks about animal cruelty in a plainspoken but never graphic way, so be aware of that if you're intending to give this book to an especially sensitive young reader.

Ruby is about to be celebrated on her Tuskday, a coming-of-age ceremony for elephants. Rather than feeling excitement, however, Ruby feels dread. She tries to run away, but her friends Ivan and Bob find her and coax her into telling them what’s on her mind. Ruby ends up sharing her earliest memories of Africa, of her mother and the poachers who murdered her for her tusks, and of being shipped off to the Big Top Mall, where Ruby met her new friends. Now that she is safe and has found a new home in the Animal Sanctuary, Ruby is grateful, but also sad for all that she has lost.

Ruby’s story is emotional and painful to read about, but middle grade readers do not need to be shielded from the harsh realities of animal mistreatment. In telling her story, Ruby honors her mother’s memory and embraces the new herd that has adopted her. Readers who are inspired to take action or learn more about elephant conservation should read the Author’s Note at the end of the book.

Highly recommended for gr. 3-7, and for anyone who has enjoyed the previous stories about Ivan and Bob. Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I have had the pleasure of reading Katherine Applegate's two other books preceding this story: The One & Only Ivan & The One and Only Bob and just like them, The One and Only Ruby was a joy to read. I loved delving into Ruby's perspective & feeling the genuine love that surrounded her. I am a big fan of Applegate's writing and this book just lived up to all the feels I get when reading her work.

Being a youth services librarian, I am always recommending Applegate books to my patrons. This year, as part of middle grade's summer reading assignment, they have to read The One and Only Ivan. When kids come in to ask for the book, I tell them "trust me you are going to love this story! And when you are done with that book, you could read the next two in the series!"

Thank you #Netgalley, Harper Collins Children's Books & Katherine Applegate for providing me with the opportunity to read a digital ARC of The One and Only Ruby in exchange for an honest review..

This is the third part of the One and Only series started by the widely acclaimed One and Only Ivan. At this point the series feels a bit played out to me. Ruby's story is relatively simple: she's a young elephant who is anxious about her upcoming tusk ceremony because she has traumatic memories of her mother's murder by ivory poachers. The story is sad and some information about conservation is shared but it felt sort of...pointless, I guess, overall?

I would like to start this off by saying yet again it is always a pleasure to read and review a Katherine Applegate masterpiece. When we first met Ruby as an infant, she was sweet but shy and gave us very little idea of what her past held. Having learned about the lives of Ivan and Bob, Ruby, the last of our unlikely trio , is coming of age as her tusks come in and steps forward for this addition to the trilogy to tell her side of how she came to be in the small Big Top Mall Circus. Our skilled and oh so talented author, speaking with a mixture of innocence, hope, and deep seeded pain, brings Ruby’s voice to life as she shares with her found family why she doesn’t want to celebrate her tusks, and how she came to lose her first family in Africa. This is tricky topic to say the least to tackle for a book meant for a younger generation. On one hand, the horror of the ivory trade and what it has done to decimate the elephant population deserves to be heard, on the other the traumatic experience of seeing one’s family slaughtered by poachers is something that may be too much for a child to grasp without being ill effected. Personally I praise Mrs. Applegate s gift for tactfully addressing this. She is sensitive to the feelings of children who might be overwhelmed but does not shy from the painful truth of the fate of Ruby’s herd. After tiny baby Ruby is taken in by Humans, she is then shuffled from home to home like a foster child searching for stability before finally winding up with Ivan and Bob at the Mall then later with her new herd at the zoo. By reliving her past she finds healing and is able to move forward. It’s all very lovely and a very satisfying conclusion.

The One and Only Ruby finally brings us the story from Ruby's point of view. We still get to see all of our favorites from the previous books but we get to find out more about our precious Ruby. Katherine Applegate does an amazing job of bringing these characters to life. The storyline is very moving and tugs on the heartstrings, much like the others. I highly recommend this series.

Ruby is facing the right of passage within her Elephant trip, but life hasn't always been easy and Tuskday brings both good and bad memories to Ruby. Follow Ruby on her journey as she learns the true meaning of Tuskday.

Such a heartfelt book about elephants. I loved every bit of Ruby’s story and though I cried, her story brought so much realization to what is happening to the elephant’s.