Ruby Holler is a
middle grade novel by
Sharon Creech. It centers around a pair of twins who are sent from the orphanage where they have lived their entire lives to live with an elderly couple, and learn a few things about life in the process.
Examples of tropes present in the novel:
- Abusive Parents: All of the foster parents that Florida and Dallas lived with prior to the start of the book were abusive in one way or another.
- Contrived Coincidence: The twins just so happen to end up living with the next-door neighbors of their biological father.
- Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: The twins' father never knew they existed.
- Doorstop Baby: Florida and Dallas were left on the front steps of the orphanage when they were babies. It's implied their mother may have been mentally ill in some way, causing her to do this.
- Good Parents: Tiller and Sairy seem to have been good parents to their children, and demonstrate some of that good parenting with the twins as well.
- Happily Adopted: At the end of the story, Tiller and Sairy tell their children that the twins will be staying with them.
- Line-of-Sight Name: The box the twins were found in was lined with travel pamphlets, including one that said "Fly to Florida" and another that said "Destination: Dallas". Since there was no information left with the twins to indicate their real names, the orphanage owners just called them Florida and Dallas based on the pamphlets.
- Orphanage of Fear: Boxton Creek Home, where Florida and Dallas live at the beginning of the story. Orphans at the Home are harshly punished for breaking any of the owners' many stern rules, and the twins recall a case where a boy died because the orphanage owners didn't get him medical attention for a serious illness.
- Parental Abandonment: The twins' mother abandoned them in a box on the orphanage doorstep. Subverted with their father, as it turns out their mother left him without even telling him she was pregnant.
