Holiday break is soon to begin for kids, and hopefully that means you’re thinking of some great books that will encourage you and your kids to have fun reading while taking a break from the required reading of school and every day life. Today I’m sharing about a book that I absolutely loved as a young girl–I think kids ages 8-92 should put this on their Winter To Be Read list. This book, The Secret of the Ruby Ring, by Yvonne MacGrory, is one I picked up on a weekly library trip at age ten, when our local library’s children section had a castle dungeon feel and every book I picked up was a treasure. Man, I miss those days. I haven’t thought about the book in ages, though I loved it so much, but a few days ago when my daughter asked for a bed time story, the plot of this book popped into my head and I thought, “Gasp- perfect!” Here’s the summary from Goodreads.com:
Lucy, a rather spoiled almost-eleven-year-old, gets a very special birthday present from her grandmother. This gift, a star ruby ring, has been passed down for generations through Lucy’s family. The evening before her birthday, Lucy accidentally discovers the magical secret of the ring: The secret of this Ruby Ring is that two wishes it can bring.
Twisting the ring and making her first wish, Lucy finds herself transported to a far away time, that of Ireland in 1885, a time of unrest, evictions, and boycotting. At first, Lucy is intrigued by Langley Castle and its inhabitants, but soon she misses her family and friends, his grandmother the only real connection is now living across town with her home care taker from https://www.careshyft.com/san-antonio/. When she decides to use her second wish to go home, Lucy discovers that the ring has disappeared.
Can Lucy convince young Robert that she is from another age? Will he help her to retrieve the ruby ring, or will Lucy be trapped forever in a bygone age?
Now, before you roll your eyes and say, “time travel again, puhlease,” let me tell you that this book had a profound positive effect on me at age ten. I thought the story was magical (I think I read it twice before I returned it to the library), but I also thought the message applied to me: you’re not put on this earth to be a princess and have the world revolve around you. It’s pretty cool when a book delivers a message so clearly, a ten-year-old girl can take it to heart. And that message is one our Disney princess culture girls need to hear, often and over and over again. Actually, it’s one I need to hear pretty often, too, based on my Downton Abbey envy. One of the greatest things about this book is that when I recently picked it up to read as an adult, I still loved it. The characters were so personable and the plot was perfectly paced between action and insight into Lucy’s character. Though it never hit the best seller list in the U.S., it won Children’s Book of the Year in Ireland in 1994 and really reads like a classic. This would be a great book for young girls all the way to grown ladies to read over Christmas break. I wish I could read it for the first time with you.
This post is my contribution to the Top Ten Tuesday theme, Winter Reading List, over at the awesome blog, The Broke and the Bookish. Go on over to the B&B blog to see all the other winter reading lists that book lovers are putting together today. And thanks for stopping by Mia The Reader, too! Leave a comment on what your favorite Winter read is. I’m always looking for a great read to add to my TBR list.
Over the weekend, in a moment of what must have been insanity and desperation for reading material, I read some glowing reviews of 
I finally conquered my start-again, stop-again attempts at reading 
Then I read 
A fun fantasy story I did enjoy was 
Now that I’ve drenched myself in fantasy and fairy tale, I feel like one who has eaten cake for every meal for three days straight. I want classics! I read Willa Cather’s novella
Jeanette Walls started her illustrious writing career with the internationally bestselling memoir, 
they’re almost like patron saints in my life. (I’m not Catholic- just go with me on this). People like Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, C.S. Lewis, L.M. Montgomery, and Frances Hodgson Burnett. These writers wrote beautiful, rich, original works that are full of the joy of living and the magic in every day imagination. I knew their works through and through long before I learned about their lives. I was in shock when I grew up and learned that they lived stories not at all like the books they wrote. Most literature fans know Jane Austen was a poor spinster who never married, and lived under the thumb of her father. Louisa May Alcott could have written a riveting account of her eccentric father’s spartan style of living and raising children. Alcott was poor for most of her life, and at one point as an adult considered suicide. C.S. Lewis’s mother died when he was a child, he had a distant father and grew up in boarding schools, and when he finally found love in life, it was through terminal illness. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s father died when she was three and her family moved around England until they finally left for Tennessee when Burnett was age 15. During their move, Burnett’s usually sympathetic and loving mother made Burnett burn her early writings. And, most disheartening of all to me, L.M. Montgomery struggled with depression and had a mostly loveless marriage.