How to Spot a Best Friend

by Bea Birdsong, Lucy Fleming (Illustrator)

Overview

In this adorable celebration of kindness and friendship, a young girl declares on her first day of school that she will find a best friend and sets out to do so.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593179277
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	06/22/2021
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Bea Birdsong is the author of I Will Be Fierce, Sam’s First Word, and other books for children. She is also a writer for the education market and a former teacher who believes in the awesome power of books to educate, entertain, and empower. Bea lives in North Carolina with her husband, son, and rescue dog. She invites you to follow her on Twitter @BeaBirdsong and visit her online at beabirdsong.com.

Lucy Fleming has been an avid doodler and bookworm since childhood. She never quite grew out of having her head in the clouds, daydreaming. She specializes in children's book illustration, where her love for designing quirky characters meets her passion for storytelling. Her clients include HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Little Tiger Press, and Oxford University Press. Lucy lives and works in a small town in England, with a cup of ginger tea in hand and her cat close by.

Editorial Reviews

2021-05-19
On the way to school, a child lists all the qualities that differentiate a best friend from a friend.

When the narrator announces, “Today, I will find a best friend!” Mama is a little dubious. It’s just the first day of school, after all. This kid is confident it will happen “like that!” and proceeds to describe what makes a best friend. A regular friend may lend a crayon, but “a best friend lends you a brand-new, extra-sharp green crayon. Even if you’re drawing a tree with 3,811 green leaves.” Similarly, regular friends sit next to you at storytime, help you build block towers, and swing with you; best friends hold your hand if the story is scary, rebuild fallen towers with you, and push you on the swings. As the child, who, like Mama, presents White, continues the litany, the illustrations alternate between views of the child and Mama and the scenarios the child describes being played out at school, with a different member of the class occupying the best-friend role in each. These classmates are racially diverse; two wear glasses, and one uses a wheelchair. By the end, readers may be a little worn down by the level of self-sacrifice expected of this hypothetical best friend, but the child’s final statement that the “number one, guaranteed best way to spot a best friend” is “to be a best friend, too” promises reciprocity.

Hopeful, if a little relentless. (Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Reviews