Ruby Lost and Found

For fans of Kelly Yang and Rebecca Stead, this touching middle grade novel maps one girl’s quest to remember her grandfather through his scavenger hunts; reconnect with her family; and fight for her community in her rapidly changing hometown. Winner of the APALA Youth Literature Award! Thanks to her Ye-Ye’s epic scavenger hunts, thirteen-year-old Ruby Chu knows San Francisco like the back of her hand. But after his death, she feels lost, and it seems like everyone—from her best friends to her older sister—is abandoning her. After Ruby gets in major trouble at school, her parents decide she has to spend the summer at a local senior center with her grandmother, Nai-Nai, and Nai-Nai’s friends for company. When a new boy from Ruby’s grade, Liam Yeung, starts showing up too, Ruby’s humiliation is complete. But Nai-Nai, her friends, and Liam all surprise Ruby. She finds herself working with Liam, who might not be as annoying as he seems, to help save a historic Chinatown bakery that’s being priced out of the neighborhood. And alongside Nai-Nai, who is keeping a secret that threatens to change everything, Ruby retraces Ye-Ye’s scavenger hunt maps in an attempt to find a way out of her grief—and maybe even find herself. Its the summer after seventh grade, and Ruby Chu is feeling more lost than ever. Her best friends arent speaking to her. She ended the year in detention. Her sisters about to leave for college. Rubys still grieving her grandfather, Ye-Ye, when it seems like no one else is. And without Ye-Ye and his annual scavenger hunts across their hometown of San Francisco, their hometown doesnt really feel like home anymore. Things get worse when Rubys forced to spend the summer with her distant grandmother, Nai-Nai, in Chinatown. But the looming shutdown of a beloved former scavenger hunt stop, Mays Bakery, and a secret about Nai-Nai threaten to change everything. Though Ruby feels out of place, maybe this summer of forming unexpected friendships and fighting to save the bakery will help Ruby reconnect with the world and discover what it means to find home again.