14 Oct / Freckleface Strawberry: Best Friends Forever by Julianne Moore, illustrated by LeUyen Pham
For those who missed the perennial chart-topper on the list of “Top ten most frequently challenged books of 2010” during the recent Banned Books Week 2011, feel free to click here.
That’s your eyebrow-raised warning right up front that even though these two delightful protagonists both have families, one of those families is described thusly: “I have two moms and a little brother and a dog.” So if two penguin daddies get your feathers all ruffled, then oh so sadly, Freckleface Strawberry Helen and Windy Pants Patrick will not be your best friends … although what a loss of something truly adorable and oh so loving that would be to miss these Best Friends Forever.
In the third installment of the Freckleface Strawberry series by THAT Julianne Moore and the wonderfully artful LeUyen Pham (click here for the first two), the initially not-so-compatible twosome have become best friends. Turns out they have so much in common being utterly different. They’re both “usual sizes” – too little and too big! They both prefer skipping lunch in the cafeteria – Freckleface prefers a hot dog cart and Windy Pants Patrick is chummy with the falafel vendor. And they’re both really good at looking out for each other.
But one day at school, the boys give Windy Pants Patrick a hard time about only playing with a girl. And maybe Freckleface is just fine playing jungle-gym monkeys with just her friends of the female variety.
Thank goodness both kids realize all too quickly that going to the museums and reading books without the other isn’t nearly as much fun. And maybe ball-playing monsters are what both Freckleface Strawberry and Windy Pants Patrick really want to do, and only with each other! “Which is why they were best friends. Forever.”
Pham once again brings the buddies to brilliant, bubbly life: the exuberance they share with each other can hardly be contained on the page, just as their disappointment over missing one another seems to be dripping off the page. Any way you look at it, the ‘awwww’-factor couldn’t be higher!
Here’s to opposites attracting … and their forever-lasting friendships.
Readers: Children
Published: 2011