By Julia Cook
A lonely colored pencil gets walked through the steps of making a friend, one at a time. It's the book for a child who wants friends and doesn't know how to start.
Brown is a colored pencil, and he's a loner. He hangs back in the box, keeps to his point, doesn't share, doesn't take turns, and can't understand why the other pencils don't want him around. He's lonely, and he blames everyone but himself. Then a wiser pencil walks him through it plainly: friendship isn't luck, it's a set of things you do. Sharing. Listening. Saying kind things. Letting other people go first. Brown tries them out, one at a time, and slowly stops being the pencil nobody picks.
There's nothing subtle here, and that's the idea. Some children don't pick the lesson up sideways from a gentler story; they need it said out loud, in order: here is what you do to make a friend. Brown's list gives a child a script to borrow, whether they hang back the way he does or try so hard it comes out wrong. It reads more like a teaching book than a story, and for a child who's been stuck, that's the whole appeal.