SOME FRIEND

Finding a friend can be hard when there are few kids in your neighborhood, but being a friend can be even harder. Feeling ignored by her family as the next-to-last of four children, fifth-grader Pearl Jordan is thrilled when boy-crazy, daring Lenore pals up with her. Grounded by her strict mother because of Lenore, Pearl befriends Artemesia, a poor girl from a migrant working family, whose drawing talent turns out to be amazing. When Lenore and chums make fun of Artemesia and physically attack her, Pearl doesn’t defend her, only to discover later that her true friend has moved again. Set in the early 1960s, when American Bandstand, Chatty Cathys, 45 records, and pay toilets were in vogue and segregation prevailed, Brady weaves the issue of integration throughout, e.g., Pearl’s family is “colored” and her father and brother march to hear Martin Luther King. A sensitive, realistic portrayal told in first person of a girl’s tough lesson about the meaning of friendship. (Fiction. 9-12)