Learning With Literature:

About Friendship and Love

By Judy Freeman

Students spend a lot of time and energy on establishing new friendships, nurturing old ones, and fitting in. What better literature link could there be than to regale them with stories about overcoming obstacles to friendships and tales about the quest for love and acceptance?

Making and Keeping Friends
Bittersweet Endings
Love and Marriage
Complicated Relationships

Making and Keeping Friends

The Lettuce Leaf Birthday Letter by Linda Taylor, illustrated by Julie Durrell (Dial, 1995); 32 pages; Grades PreK–2; $14.99.
Duck is so proud of the colorful picture he has just painted on a big, crisp lettuce leaf for best friend Goose's birthday. Not knowing how to write, he tells the mail rabbit of the letter's destination, which absentminded Rabbit promptly forgets. Instead, he delivers the leaf first to toothachy Beaver; then indignant, lovelorn Pig; and later to nearsighted Owl, whose specs are missing. Although Rabbit succeeds in helping each solve his or her problem, by the time he arrives at Goose's cottage, she is distraught over being forgotten by her best friend. She is baffled but pleased when Rabbit finally presents her with the now limp, soggy, and partially nibbled masterpiece. The cheerful and endearing gouache and watercolor artwork will make this a story-time favorite. Ask your students to talk about the treasures they could make to express their affection for a best friend.

Lizzie Logan Wears Purple Sunglasses by Eileen Spinelli, illustrated by Melanie Hope Greenberg (Simon & Schuster, 1995); 122 pages; Grades 2–5; $14.
The day eight-year-old Heather moves into her new house, she is taken aback by imperious ten-year-old Lizzie, who claims to smoke, tells her that the previous owner of the house was eaten by a spider plant, and fishes in a neighbor's puddle using a meatball for bait. Sassy and outspoken, Lizzie says things like "Holy crab cakes," and even stages a funeral for Heather's dead cricket, Hoppy. This new best friend is far from being all sweetness and light, which is why your students will ultimately take to her quirky, prickly personality, as does Heather in spite of herself.

Compare the development of another unlikely friendship in P. J. Petersen's I Hate Company, illustrated by Betsy James; (Dutton, 1994); 87 pages; Grades 2–4; $12.99, in which Dan's mother invites a newly divorced college chum and her manic three-year-old son, Jimmy, to stay in their apartment while "Aunt Kay" looks for a new job. Dan does his best to cope with the little terror — who wrecks books, shoves crayons up Dan's nose, and listens incessantly to a tape of "The Three Little Pigs" — and eventually learns to like him. Students can write about and share their own humorous adventures with friends.

Crazy Lady! by Jane Leslie Conly (HarperCollins, 1993); 180 pages; Grades 5–8; $12.89.
In 1981, the year after his mother died, seventh grader Vernon Dibbs first meets his neighbors — crazy Maxine Flooter and her mentally handicapped teenage son, Ronald. Vernon's Baltimore neighborhood is a rough one, and his first reaction is to join his friends in tormenting the volatile, unstable, and alcoholic woman. However, a chance encounter with Maxine in a grocery store allows Vernon to view her as a person. When she realizes Vernon is struggling in English, she even arranges for a former schoolteacher, Miss Annie, to tutor him. As payment, Miss Annie asks him to help Maxine clean up her yard and to look after Ronald, a hapless, nonverbal, frightened, and gawky boy. Reluctantly at first, Vernon gets entwined in Ronald's life and organizes a neighborhood carnival to raise money for sneakers for Ronald to wear to the Special Olympics. Your class may want to know more about getting involved in the Special Olympics after reading this book, but the real legacy of this powerful and complex story is its message about overcoming — or at least confronting — life's many obstacles and heartbreaks.

Bittersweet Endings

Murphy and Kate by Ellen Howard, illustrated by Mark Graham (Simon & Schuster, 1995); 32 pages; Grades 1–4; $15.
After Kate's dog, Murphy, dies, she can't imagine living without him, ever feeling happy again, or forgetting him, as people claim she will. In a poignantly affectionate remembrance of their 14 years together, illustrated with soft oil paintings, the book shows Kate and Murphy growing up together as inseparable companions. A grieving Kate will carry on without him and even learn to be happy again, "one step at a time," by remembering the times they shared.

To further explore kids' devotion to their pets, read Joanne Ryder's Without Words, photographs by Barbara Sonneborn; (Sierra Club, 1995); 32 pages; Grades K–8; $15.95, a poetic musing on the love between humans and animals. The large color photos show children and adults hugging and playing with a variety of animals, including a Bengal tiger, an elephant, a manatee, and two corn snakes. Use Ryder's quote, "Sometimes, without words, we can make a bridge to reach another unlike us," to start a dialogue about likely and unlikely friendships.

Phoenix Rising by Karen Hesse (Henry Holt, 1994); 182 pages; Grades 5–8; $15.95.
Sometimes science can go horribly wrong, as it did at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. In this moving novel about a fictional nuclear accident, 13-year-old Nyle's Gran has taken in two strangers, evacuees from the nearby power plant — Mrs. Trent and her 15-year-old son, Ezra, who is dying from radiation poisoning. It has been a week since the nuclear accident that emptied Boston and contaminated the New England countryside, and Nyle is overwhelmed by the enormity of the changes in her life. "I'm not making friends with a dead boy," she insists, but she is drawn to Ezra, and in her compelling first-person narration, describes his temporary recovery and inevitable relapse. Pick up on Nyle's allusions to Anne Frank — "You were an ordinary girl forced into an extraordinary situation. Your death keeps all of us from forgetting what you died for" — in your discussions on courage, responsibility, and survival.

Love and Marriage

The Faithful Friend by Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Brian Pinkney (Simon & Schuster, 1995); 40 pages; Grades 3–6; $16.
On the Caribbean island of Martinique in the last century lived Clement and Hippolyte, who were raised closely together as brothers. Clement falls in love with a painting of Pauline, even though she is the niece of quimboiseur (wizard) Monsieur Zabocat. So Clement and Hippolyte journey to meet Pauline at her uncle's plantation, stopping along the way to bury the body of an unfortunate beggar. Pauline's acceptance of Clement's marriage proposal enrages her uncle, who unleashes a murderous revenge to be carried out by three zombie women. Meanwhile, Hippolyte overhears their plot and subverts the murderers three times, even though he knows his interference will cause him to turn to stone. True love and friendship win out in the end of this dramatic and brooding folktale, which is accompanied by huge, gorgeous oil and scratchboard illustrations, and includes a glossary and pronunciation guide of the Creole-flavored French words.

Another mesmerizing tale of transformation and romance is Marilyn Singer's The Maiden on the Moor, illustrated by Troy Howell; (Morrow, 1995); 40 pages; Grades 3–6; $15, adapted from a medieval English song about a lonely shepherd who falls in love with the beautiful, unconscious woman he finds lying in the snow.

The Three Princes: A Tale From the Middle East by Eric Kimmell, illustrated by Leonard Everett Fisher (Holiday House, 1994); 32 pages; Grades 1–4; $15.95.
In order to win the princess's hand, three cousins — Princes Fahad, Muhammed, and Mohsen — heed her command "to bring back the rarest thing you find in your travels" and set out in different directions on camelback, across the desert and into the world for one year. The three princes meet up at year's end to compare their newfound wonders: a crystal ball, a flying carpet, and a healing orange. The princess gets sick and the princes rush home to save her. Now the princess must decide which of the princes' objects was most responsible for saving her life. Tell students to stop reading the story here and debate which suitor she should choose, and why. This folktale, with its bold acrylic paintings, also makes a wonderful play, transcribed as reader's theater.

Of the three foolish princes in the good-natured Italian folktale The Frog Princess by Laura Cecil, illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark; (Greenwillow, 1995); 32 pages; Grades K–4; $16, the queen declares that whomever marries the cleverest wife shall become king. Assign a group of children to work on scripts for these and other folktales, and then stage readings of each.

Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman (Clarion,1994); 169 pages; Grades 6–9; $14.95.
Fourteen-year-old Catherine's diary of 1290 chronicles a year of rebellious outbursts against her family's attempts to tame her and to make her more dutiful and domestically inclined as befitting the daughter of a minor nobleman. Catherine's hilarious attempts to scare off every prospective husband her father dredges up for her — along with pungent details about the era's food, sanitation, clothing, activities, religion, and customs — will be a delight to classes studying the Middle Ages. Though she blackens her teeth and acts like a fool, it appears Catherine may not be able to stop negotiations of marriage with Shaggy Beard, a lord old enough to be her father. A Newbery Honor book (and well deserving of the award), this was my favorite American fiction book of 1994.

Complicated Relationships

The Arkadians by Lloyd Alexander (Dutton, 1995); 272 pages; Grades 6–8; $15.99.
My antiquated college dictionary defines Arcadia as "a mountainous district in ancient Greece, proverbial for the contented pastoral simplicity of its people. "Master tale-weaver Alexander takes us there in a quest that is every bit as eventful as the first paragraph promises: "This is the tale of a jackass and a young bean counter, a girl of marvels and mysteries, horsemen swift as wind, Goat Folk, Daughters of Morning, voyages, tempest, terrors, and disasters. And the occasional rainbow." When Lucian, an accountant to King Bromios, makes the mistake of uncovering evidence of corruption in the palace storehouse, his only option is to escape before two thieving royal soothsayers silence him for good. On his way, Lucian encounters Fronto, a talking donkey who was a human poet before he swam in a forbidden pool. The two join Joy-in-the-Dance, a young pythoness oracle on her way to the mountains to see the Lady of Wild Things. The Lady's feminist followers have been persecuted by the male-dominated Bear tribe and have been driven into hiding. We root for the budding attraction between Bear tribe member Lucian and Joy-in-the-Dance, who turns out to be the daughter of the Lady. Their union raises hopes for a new society based on peace, knowledge, and reconciliation of the sexes.

Shirley Climo's Atalanta's Race: A Greek Myth, illustrated by Alexander Koshkin; (Clarion, 1995); 32 pages; Grades 3–5; $15.95, is an apt accompaniment to Alexander's high-spirited Greek myth-based fantasy. Infuriated that his newborn child is not a boy, King Iasus orders the baby girl to be cast out on a mountain slope to die. Instead, she is found and raised by ashe-bear and then taken in by a hunter. Atalanta grows up not believing in love and agrees to wed the man who can outrun her in a race, declaring that the penalty for defeat is death.

Judy Freeman (Book Talk), a librarian at Van Holten School in Bridgewater, New Jersey, is the author of Books Kids Will Sit Still For: The Complete Read-Aloud Guide (R.R. Bowker, 1990) and More Books Kids Will Sit Still For (1995). She also presents workshops on children's literature.