I picked this book up because I really liked Ms. Baskin’s book Anything But Typical, about a boy with autism. Ruby on the Outside sounded as if it had a good premise: “Eleven year old Ruby Danes is about to start middle school, yet no one in her life, other than her aunt, knows her deepest, darkest secret—her mother is in prison.” (inside cover blurb)

But, big but, the story itself is rather slight. Lots of emotions are packed into the book’s 163 pages, but not much actually happens. Ruby goes to visit her mom at the prison. Ruby remembers visiting her mom at the prison. Ruby makes a new friend, Margalit. Ruby is afraid Margalit will find out that Ruby’s mom is in prison. Ruby and Margalit write a story and draw pictures together.

If that had been the only problem with the book, I might have just given it an “E” for effort and gone on to the next book. But I’m about to go on a campaign, a picky little “Bring Back the Copyeditors” campaign. This book is the third one I’ve read in the past month, all published by major publishers for Pete’s sake, with multiple misprints and errors. If I were Ms. Baskin, I’d be angry and upset. Isn’t it the publisher’s responsibility to hire a decent copyeditor and make sure the book goes to press as error-free as possible? I stumbled over several places in this novel where a word had obviously been omitted or repeated erroneously. These are common mistakes that will be found in any manuscript, but the novel should never, never be published with the mistakes and typos uncorrected. Are the copyeditors on strike? Is is considered sufficient these days just to spell check a manuscript with the computer and then publish it?

If someone in publishing can tell me why I am finding so many children’s books lately with multiple printing errors, I would appreciate being educated. Can the publishers not afford to hire copyeditors? In the meantime, if you are a children’s author, I would suggest that you hire your own copyeditor before even a major publisher publishes your book. It’s a shame, but someone needs to do the job.