Real Friends by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham

Newbery-honor author Shannon Hale’s graphic memoir charts the ups and downs of elementary- age friendship.

Real Friends by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham.  First Second, 2017, 211 pages

Reading level: Middle grades, ages 8-10

Recommended for: ages 8-12, especially girls

Shannon Hale grew up in the middle of a church-going family, in a peaceful middle-class neighborhood of Salt Lake City.  Though her circumstances seemed ideal, she struggled with two significant issues.  First, friendship.  Sensitive, imaginative, and slightly OCD by nature, she found compatible friends hard to come by. It wasn’t so bad in kindergarten and first grade, but in second grade her best friend Adrienne moved away.  And when—oh, joy!—Adrienne moved back at the start of third grade, she came with a package deal: The Group, headed by the talented, attractive, charismatic high-achiever Jen.  Third through fifth grades were a continual struggle to stay in The Group: avoid killer faux pas, wear the right clothes, make the right jokes and steer clear of Jenny (not Jen), who was equally needy but much handier with the stiletto-sharp putdowns. “I felt trapped on a stormy sea . . . Up, down.  At home, too: Up, down, up, down . . . It felt like living in a house with a wild bear.”  The wild bear was Shannon’s second big problem: her oldest sister Wendy, a temperamental tyrant and much-dreaded baby-sitter.

Though careful to credit her loving parents, Shannon is honest about the difficulty of maneuvering grade-school social cliques (in middle school/junior high it’s worse, but the memoir ends at sixth grade).  Those of us who didn’t rule our own little “Groups” (which would be most of us) remember exactly what this feels like: the cold shoulders, the invitations we didn’t get, the team captains who wouldn’t pick us until we’re the last in the pool.  Girls who are going through it now will instantly relate, and hopefully recognize that this little hell won’t last. Shannon eventually gains enough confidence, through a couple of slightly older friends, to see her differences as a positive.  To some readers, her triumph may come too soon, and I wonder if she was able to maintain her freshly-minted confidence through sixth grade and beyond.  But her story is honest, funny, insightful, poignant, and brilliantly pictured by illustrator Pham.  It accomplishes the difficult feat of applying an adult’s perspective while accurately recalling the child’s, and I hope that her conclusion (“No one’s destiny is to be alone”) will encourage some despairing fifth-grader to persevere.

Cautions: Language (a small amount of mild vulgarity: “turdmongers,” “pee”)

Overall rating: 4.5 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 4
• Artistic value: 5