By Shannon Hale
A true-story graphic novel about the girl-friendship-group years, when your best friend gets pulled into the popular group and you're suddenly on the outside.
This is Shannon Hale's own childhood, drawn. Shannon has a best friend, Adrienne, and then Adrienne gets pulled up into 'The Group,' the popular circle ruled by a queen bee named Jen, and Shannon has to figure out whether she can follow, whether she even wants to, and who she is when the friend she counted on isn't standing next to her anymore. There are shifting alliances, whispered rules nobody explains, one mean girl, and a big sister at home whose temper makes the house its own kind of hard. It's every ache of the elementary-school friendship years, told honestly and drawn so warmly that a child races through it and then wants to talk.
For a child living the friend-group churn right now, this is the book that says out loud: yes, it's really like this, and no, you're not the only one. Because it's a true story it doesn't hand out a neat lesson, it just shows Shannon feeling left out, getting it wrong, and slowly working out which friendships are worth the effort. The graphic-novel format pulls even a reluctant reader straight through, and the emotional honesty is why children hug it to their chests. It's the anchor of this whole trail.