Free • Open to the Public • Handicapped Accessible
For further information or directions contact the Courthouse-on-the-Square Museum
110 West Hickory • Denton, TX 76201 • 940-349-2850 • www.dentoncounty.com/chos
Author Robin Jansen Shope will discuss her book Ruby Red, a fictionalized tale of a
true event connected to the Orphan Trains in the 1920s. Robin’s books will be available for
sale during the lecture.
Robin is an educator with four teaching certificates and twenty-five years of classroom
experience. Her day position is Special Education Coordinator at the Denton County Juvenile
Justice System for at-risk teens. By night she is an avid reader and a compulsive writer.
Ruby Red is Robin's first young adult
novel. Homeless children roamed the streets of
New York City from the late 1800s through the
1930s. Death and disease were heaped upon
poverty and overcrowding, causing thousands
of children to be abandoned and left to fend for
themselves. Eleven-year-old Ruby is taken in
as a maid. Believing life holds more for her
than washing someone’s clothes, she makes a
risky move by faking insanity. After being expelled
from the household, Ruby sneaks onto
the Orphan Train. Both an enigma and a young
teen, she is the perfect reflection of how life
once was in America. Ruby embodies goodness,
and simplicity of truth; a rare gem which
bespeaks her name.
Friday, January 21, 2011
12:15-1:00
Commissioners Courtroom
Courthouse-on-the-Square
Orphan Trains
in the 1920s
by Robin Jansen Shope
