Bibliographic Information:

Rathmann, Peggy. Ruby the copycat. New York: Scholastic, 1991. Print.

Genre: The genre of the story Ruby the Copycat by Peggy Rathmann is a picture book. The story fits the genre because it is 32 pages, and each of the pages has a picture on it, that also correlates with the text. However it is not just a picture book. This book has overlapping genres. The book is also a Realistic Fiction. It also falls into this category because this is a story that could very likely happen today. The story is about a girl named Ruby, who copies everything that her friend Angela does. Angela then gets angry and doesn’t want to talk to Ruby anymore. The teacher gets involved and instead of copying Angela, Ruby starts to copy the teacher Mrs. Hart. In the end Ruby learns how to be her own person. This story is a common real life experience because many people copy, mimic, and repeat what others say and do. Because of the pictures and the reality of the story, Ruby the Copycat falls into two categories of genres, Realistic Fiction and Picture book.

Literary Elements:

There are several literary elements in this story. First of all there is the setting. The majority of the book is set in the classroom during school hours. The author does a good job of portraying the school setting. She describes several school activities, such as show and tell, sharing weekend plans, and writing poetry. The only thing that Peggy Rathmann does not explain very well is what Ruby does while she goes home, however she does imply it. On page 7, Ruby paints flowers that match the flowers on Angela’s dress.  On page 8, ruby comes to school matching Angela’s “When Ruby came back to school after lunch; she was wearing a sweater with daisies on it” (Rathmann, 8). The setting doesn’t cover exactly what Ruby does at home, however it does a great job of explaining what is happening in school.

                Another literary element is Plot. Plot is the sequence of events that lead up to the central conflict. In this book, Ruby copies Angela so many times that Angela gets mad. Not only does Ruby copy Angela but she also copies the teacher, Miss Hart. On page 18, Angela writes Ruby an angry note “You copied me! I’m telling Miss Hart! P.S. I hate your hair that way!” (Rathmann, 18). Ruby faces two kinds of conflict in this story. First she faces self v. other, because she is fighting with Angela. Angela is angry with ruby for copying her all the time. The climax of the story is when Ruby and Angela argue, and this peaks the self v. other conflict. While there is this self v. other conflict at the climax of the story, there is another kind of conflict. This conflict is self v. society. In the story Ruby copies both Angela and Miss Hart. She copies them because she is afraid to be herself. She is afraid that she will not fit in. However in the end of the story, she resolves this conflict by being herself and showing the class how she could hop and they join in with her. “Miss Hart turned on the tape player and said “’ Follow the leader! Do the Ruby Hop!’” So Ruby led the class around the room, while everyone copied her.”

                The final literary element I am going to discuss is Theme. The major theme of this story is individuality. In the beginning of the story, Ruby copies Angela. On Page 3, Angela says, “’I was the flower girl at my sister’s wedding.” (Rathmann page 3). Then on page 4, Ruby copies Angela and says, “’I was the flower girl at my sister’s wedding too.”’ Ruby continues to copy Angela throughout the story. After Ruby continuously copies Angela, Miss Hart holds ruby after class. She says to Ruby ‘“Ruby dear, you don’t need to copy everything Angela does. You can be anything you want to be, but be Ruby first. I like Ruby.”’ (Rathmann, 19). The theme of this book is to be yourself. One does not need to copy others in order to be accepted. One should be accepted for who you are.

Artistic Elements: There are so many artistic elements to this story. First of all there is a lot of color used. Color is often used for emotion. On page 24, Ruby’s ears and cheeks turn red. This redness shows Ruby’s embarrassment. The color displays the emotion that the characters are feeling. Also in this book, the art and the text work well together. On page 7, you can see Ruby trying to copy Angela’s sweater, by painting flowers. Then on page 8, the reader can see Ruby with painted flowers pinned on her pink sweater. The pictures help explain the text, without the pictures, the reader wouldn’t be able to tell that Ruby had painted the flowers and pinned them on her sweater. The pictures vary in shape and size throughout the story. On page 11, there are floating illustrations. On pages 13 and 14, the illustrations are boxed, but they are full bleed because they cover both, pages. There are also just boxed illustrations such as on 17, the illustration is boxed and takes up the whole page, however there aren’t any words on the page. This story is told by both text and illustrations. If it weren’t for the illustrations, the story wouldn’t be easy to follow. Also, without the illustrations, much of the story wouldn’t make sense. This story is told by both the illustrations and the text.