Be Brave, Ruby B!, a middle-grade graphic novel by Meg Selkey, is scheduled for publication in August 2027. The book centers on three seventh-grade girls researching civil rights pioneer Ruby Bridges for a school project—work that becomes far more consequential after a local school board calls it “controversial” and tries to stop it.
The premise puts historical study and present-day student action in direct conversation. Rather than retelling Ruby Bridges’ childhood solely as a historical biography, Selkey’s story follows young people encountering that history, discussing its meaning, and deciding what to do when adults challenge their right to present it. The result is positioned as a story about friendship, research, institutional pressure and finding the confidence to speak publicly.
Little, Brown Ink has acquired world rights to the book. Rachel Stark is set to edit, while the deal was negotiated by Judy Hansen of Hansen Literary Agency. Andrea Colvin made the acquisition during her time at the publisher.
A school project becomes the central conflict
The protagonists of Be Brave, Ruby B! are three seventh graders, an age group sitting at an important crossroads for the book’s core questions. They are old enough to investigate history, collaborate on an assignment and recognize when an authority figure is dismissing their work. At the same time, they are still students navigating the power imbalance between children and a school board.
Initially, the girls’ Ruby Bridges project appears to be a familiar classroom undertaking. That changes once the board labels their research controversial and attempts to shut it down. The stated conflict is therefore not simply whether the students can finish their assignment. It is whether they will retreat after encountering resistance, or defend the importance of the story they have chosen to study.
That framing makes the book’s stakes personal without separating them from the larger civic issue. A school board is an institutional body involved in school governance; within the novel’s premise, its objection becomes the immediate barrier that turns research into a test of the girls’ convictions. The three students must work out what speaking up looks like together, rather than having an adult solve the problem for them.
Why Ruby Bridges is at the heart of the story
Ruby Bridges is described as a civil rights pioneer who, at six years old in 1960, became the first Black child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in the South. Desegregation refers to ending enforced racial separation. Her experience is thus not background decoration for the fictional students’ project; it is the historical foundation for the questions they confront in their own school community.
By having the girls research Bridges rather than merely hear a lesson about her, Selkey’s setup gives the characters an active relationship with the material. They are not only learning a set of dates and events. They are dealing with what can happen when a well-established civil-rights subject is treated as unacceptable or divisive in their present setting.
The title also suggests a deliberate connection between past and present courage. Bridges’ story concerns a child placed at the center of a major struggle over equal access to education. The seventh graders’ circumstances are fictional and different, but their challenge is similarly tied to school, authority and the choice to stand behind a belief when it becomes difficult to do so.
Sequential comics and diary interstitials
Be Brave, Ruby B! will combine conventional sequential comics with diary-format interstitials. In comics, sequential storytelling is the use of arranged panels, images and text to create a narrative across a page or pages. It is the principal visual grammar of the medium: readers interpret individual moments and the transitions between them to follow action, dialogue and emotion.
The diary sections will break up that panel-to-panel storytelling. An interstitial is material placed between larger sections of a work. Here, diary-format interstitials can offer a more direct, personal mode of expression alongside scenes involving all three girls and the school board dispute. The announced format does not establish exactly whose diary entries will appear or how frequently they will be used, but it clearly signals a story built to move between shared events and interior reflection.
That combination is particularly suited to a narrative about students processing difficult material. A group scene can show disagreement, solidarity or a public confrontation. A diary page can slow the pace and make room for private uncertainty, anger or resolve. It may also help distinguish the perspectives of the three protagonists as their project develops.
Meg Selkey’s previous comics work
Selkey is a graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies, and Be Brave, Ruby B! was created in collaboration with the institution. Her thesis project, Between, is a multi-chapter comic following a friend group through sleepovers from early childhood into the teen years. That work examines adolescent relationships as they change over time, including codependency, microaggressions, sexuality, awkwardness, estrangement and reconnection.
Her other listed projects include Sofa King, which appeared in the 2023 ShortBox Comics Fair; Dunk, a slice-of-life short about two girls playing a pool game; and Mothering, about the intersection between artistic life and a desire to become a mother. Selkey was also a 2024 MICE Mini-Grant awardee for a work about Krishna, who struggles to find her place among girls filming a lip-sync video.
Those projects point to an established interest in interpersonal dynamics and the uncomfortable, formative moments of youth. The announcement does not reveal the finished art, page count or full cast for Be Brave, Ruby B!, so there is no basis yet to judge how the new book will compare stylistically with Selkey’s earlier work. Still, its focus on a trio of students negotiating friendship and social pressure fits the concerns present in her prior comics.
What is known—and what remains to be revealed
The confirmed publication window is August 2027, giving readers a clear release target but leaving many practical details unannounced. No format specifications, cover, pricing, page count or wider plot information have been provided. Likewise, the available details establish that the school board attempts to suppress the project, but do not disclose how the girls respond or where their decision ultimately leads.
That uncertainty is appropriate to preserve. The premise promises a conflict over historical learning and student voice, but it does not yet provide enough information to reduce the book to a simple issue narrative or predict its resolution. What is clear is that Selkey is using the graphic-novel form to put three contemporary middle-school students in conversation with Ruby Bridges’ legacy.
For readers keeping an eye on adjacent comic-book news, Joking Joystick has also covered the uncertainty surrounding Shaquille O’Neal’s delayed Black Caesar comic and planned convention appearance. Be Brave, Ruby B!, however, is a distinct middle-grade project with its own announced August 2027 publication plan.
For now, the key appeal is in the book’s two-layer structure: a real civil-rights history viewed through the work of fictional students, and a visual format that pairs sequential scenes with diary-style reflection. As more details emerge, the project’s specific approach to Ruby Bridges, the three girls’ relationship and their response to the board’s challenge should come into sharper focus.
