Hey Pencilore fans, today we will be reviewing one of Jacqueline Wilson’s classics – Ruby and Garnet, which are about the tomboy Ruby and the more girl-like Garnet and how they try to live their lives without any problems concerning personality, etiquette and others.

Doing their best to make everyone miserable in the process, ten-year-old identical twins Ruby and Garnet reluctantly adapt to changes in their family and themselves in this revealing double journal. As close in other ways as twins can be, Ruby is otherwise as rude and bossy as Garnet is shy and wimpy. Ruby doesn’t like Rose, the new woman in their father Richard’s life, nor his decision to move to a small town and open a bookshop, nor their new teacher, nor their classmates, so Garnet trails along on a campaign of pranks and bad behavior, offering miniscule resistance. Then the twins, at Ruby’s instigation, take an entrance exam for an expensive boarding school and only Garnet is offered a scholarship. Wilson works with a broad brush, exaggerating the differences in the twins’ personalities, and endowing Rose and Richard with inhuman funds of patience. While readers will spend most of the book wondering why Ruby wasn’t strangled long ago, she takes the impending separation from her twin so much harder than Garnet that she becomes a tragic figure. In the end, the two part with hugs and tears, and start making new friends almost immediately. Their alternating accounts displays the difference between Ruby’s long and chatty, Garnet’s short but eloquent turns in writing. This displays how easy it is for an ill-fated event could occur and completely turn their friendship onto an unfortunate rollercoaster of hurt and hatred.

This novel is filled with unforgettable characters, slightly patronizing content and of course an air blowing in which seems to make you feel like you’re really in there. This is the reason I highly recommend this novel to any type of children from ages 7-13. I will most certainly be reviewing more books by the simply magic Jacqueline Wilson – so stick around for more next time!