Alicia's Best Friends

March 24, 2003
The star of Alicia Has a Bad Day, Missing Molly and more returns in Alicia's Best Friends by Lisa Jahn-Clough. The bespectacled do-gooder finds herself in a pickle when she throws a "best friends party" and they all want to know which of them is her "best" best friend.

March 1, 2003
PreS-Gr 1-The author of Alicia Has a Bad Day (Houghton, 1994) explores another real-life challenge for her carrot-haired, bespectacled heroine whose friends demand she select a favorite among them. As she takes turns enjoying each highly qualified candidate, including her dog, the girl always realizes how much she misses Mitchell, Charlotte, Henry, or Lucy. Jahn-Clough's childlike, multicultural cartoon paintings prove highly successful in using color to evoke mood. Unfortunately, her diplomatic resolution of declaring each friend a "best" for a particular activity probably will not work well when readers actually experience this type of dispute. Still, the book will be useful when discussing conflict resolution with the younger set.-Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA

Copyright 2003 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2003
PreS-Gr. 1. Alicia has four playmates and a dog, Neptune, and she considers all of them to be very close friends. She's distressed when her playmates insist that she name one of them as her very best friend as she knows that when she plays with one friend, she misses the others. Frustrated, Alicia retreats with Neptune to work things out, and eventually comes to a realization that is mature beyond her years: friends should be appreciated for who they are. Jahn-Clough, author of several previous books about friendship, once again presents a complex aspect of friendship in a way children will understand. Her deceptively simple artwork--unsophisticated forms outlined in thick, black lines and colored in bold, childlike strokes--acknowledges multicultural and nonsexist values as her straightforward, declarative sentences bring home the message that friendship shouldn't be a contest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2003
Alicia faces a dilemma when her four friends ask which one of them is her best friend. After thinking and playing with her dog Neptune, she concludes that each friend, even Neptune, offers a special talent: Mitchell is her "best soccer friend," Charlotte is her "best painting friend," and so on--and Neptune is her "best dog friend." The bold color illustrations artfully balance detail and white space to convey a striking design.

(Copyright 2003 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)