Ruby The Copycat by Peggy Rathmann - Goodreads

It's the first day of school, and Ruby is new. When her classmate Angela wears a red bow in her hair, Ruby comes back from lunch wearing a red bow, too. When Angela wears a flowered dress, suddenly Ruby's wearing one, too. Fortunately, Ruby's teacher knows a better way to help Ruby fit in--by showing how much fun it is to be herself!

Ruby is a copycat!
On the day Angela wears a red bow in her hair,
Ruby returns from lunch with a red bow in her hair. When Angela wears a flowered sweater, Ruby returns from lunch wearing a flowered sweater.
Ruby even copies Angela's poem!

Fortunately, Ruby has the patient and perceptive Miss Hart as her teacher. Miss Hart helps Ruby discover her own creative resources, which keeps Ruby literally jumping for joy!
In this sensitive and endearing tale, Peggy Rathmann reveals, with charming off-beat illustrations, the universal struggle of a child trying to discover her own individuality. 

It seems that something other than coincidence is at work when diminutive Ruby, a newcomer to Miss Hart's class, is entranced by schoolmate Angela's attention-getting red bow and returns from lunch with an identical bow atop her head. Ruby's maddening habit becomes increasingly apparent as she happily endures a rainbow of wet paint in imitation of Angela's hand-painted outfit, proudly plagiarizes Angela's poetry and tries pink press-on nails after admiring Miss Hart's manicure. Finally, challenged to display a talent all her own, Ruby admits that she likes to hop and masterfully bounces around her desk. To her surprise, she impresses her classmates and wins Angela's friendship at last. Rathmann's expressively illustrated, quirky and individualistic first book encourages readers to have confidence and not to take skills, however unimpressive they may seem, for granted. Ages 4-8.

Peggy Rathmann

 Margaret Crosby "Peggy" Rathmann (born March 4, 1953) is an American illustrator and writer of children's picture books.

Rathmann was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and graduated from the University of Minnesota. She studied commercial art, fine art, and children's book creation in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles.[2] Her first book, "Ruby the Copycat, earned Ms. Rathmann the 'Most Promising New Author' distinction in Publishers Weekly's 1991 annual Cuffie Awards." That book was followed by her illustrations of Barbara Bottner's Bootsie Barker Bites and by the self-illustrated Good Night, Gorilla, based on her experiences with gorillas. Officer Buckle and Gloria (1995) won the annual Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration. Since then she has written two more: Ten Minutes till Bedtime and The Day The Babies Crawled Away, which made the Horn Book Fanfare List of best books of 2003.

Rathmann lives in Nicasio, California (as of 2004).

In 2014 Good Night, Gorilla was a runner-up (Honor Book) for the Phoenix Picture Book Award from the Children's Literature Association, which annually recognizes the best picture book that did not win a major award 20 years earlier. "Books are considered not only for the quality of their illustrations, but for the way pictures and text work together."

Books

Rathmann has illustrated at least seven picture books, six of which she also wrote.

    Ruby the Copycat (Scholastic, 1991)
    Bootsie Barker Bites, written by Barbara Bottner (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1992)
    Good Night, Gorilla (Putnam, 1994)
    Officer Buckle and Gloria (Putnam, 1995)
    10 Minutes till Bedtime (Putnam, 1998)
    The Day the Babies Crawled Away (Putnam, 2003)
    How Many Lambies on Grammy's Jammies? (Putnam, 2006)

Several translations have been published. Gute Nacht, Gorilla (2006) was named "Book of the Month" for September 2006 by the German Institut für Jugendliteratur (young people's literature).

References

"Rathmann, Margaret Crosby". Anita Silvey. The Essential Guide to Children's Books and Their Creators. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 9780547348896. Page 378 at Google Books. Retrieved 2015-03-21.
"About Peggy Rathmann". Peggy Rathman (peggyrathmann.com). 2004. Retrieved 2014-07-11.
"Caldecott Medal & Honor Books, 1938–Present". Association for Library Service to Children, American Library Association (ala.org/alsc).
"Ten Minutes till Bedtime (review)". Archived from the original on 2007-12-08. Retrieved 2010-06-21.
"The Horn Book Fanfare List". The Horn Book Magazine. Boston. LXXX (1): 9. January–February 2004. ISSN 0018-5078.
"Phoenix Picture Book Award". Children's Literature Association. Retrieved 2014-07-14.