Told entirely in Ruby\u2019s voice, the story centers on the young pachyderm\u2019s uncertainties around her Tuskday ceremony: a rite of passage that celebrates the appearance of an elephant\u2019s front teeth. In the first-person narration, Ruby\u2019s feelings\u2014her anxieties about her emerging tusks, her traumatic memories of poachers, and her fears about growing up\u2014all feel immediate. Judge\u2019s watercolor illustrations are extraordinary, capturing the emotional landscape of elephant life through body language and expressive eyes. Daytime scenes at the sanctuary where Ruby lives are bathed in warm golds and greens; vignettes focus on some of her more intimate moments. A particularly stunning nighttime spread depicts Ruby gazing at a luminous moon, surrounded by her herd\u2019s protective circle\u2014the deep blues and silvery whites creating a sanctuary of light against darkness that mirrors the book\u2019s central theme. The vertical lines of the trunks and soft-edged, massive elephant forms work together to create a sense of visual calm and safety, grounding Ruby\u2019s emotional journey. Readers will organically absorb facts about tusks, mud baths, and herd behavior while also confronting deeper fears about loss and belonging. Applegate\u2019s text may be a bit dense for the youngest listeners, but it serves as an effective introduction to the characters from her One and Only novels.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Told entirely in Ruby\u2019s voice, the story centers on the young pachyderm\u2019s uncertainties around her Tuskday ceremony: a rite of passage that celebrates the appearance of an elephant\u2019s front teeth. In the first-person narration, Ruby\u2019s feelings\u2014her anxieties about her emerging tusks, her traumatic memories of poachers, and her fears about growing up\u2014all feel immediate. Judge\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}