The growing-up years are full of questions. Where do I fit in? Who will be my friend? What will I be when I grow up?
Those two tweens obsessed with self-improvement return in Amy Ignatow's "The Popularity Papers: The Long-Distance Dispatch between Lydia Goldblatt & Julie Graham-Chang" (Amulet Books, ages 9-13). Lydia and Julie are still determined to achieve popularity, but first they need to figure out what it is.
They imagine that if they dutifully apply the rules they'll achieve their goal. As in Ms. Ignatow's previous book, they document their efforts in a journal they jointly write and illustrate.
Just as the two are scheduled to start middle school their plans are foiled. Lydia's mother announces THE WORST NEWS EVER IN THE HISTORY OF EVER!!! She, Lydia and Lydia's sister, Melody, will be moving to London for six months.
Julie's two dads and Lydia's mom try to ease the trauma. The dads will let Julie use their laptop, and Lydia's mom provides Lydia with a computer. Their journal becomes a trans-Atlantic effort as the girls exchange emails and scans and chat.
Lydia's attempts to fit in with the popular British girls totally fail. She reacts by starting her own clique with a group of misfits she dubs The Outcasts. She looks forward to taking part in the school play, a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
Julie starts her first year back home at Hannibal Hamlin Junior High without her best friend. She's amazed to find herself adopted by a popular clique of girls, the Bichons.
On the academic front, Julie's art teacher, Ms. Harrington, urges her to develop her own artistic style and move beyond the cartoons she favors.
As the six months go by the girls try out new roles. Lydia coaches The Outcasts to help them lose the social handicaps that keep them from popularity. Her attempts at leadership, however, begin to cross over into dictatorship. Julie, for her part, grows tired of the Bichons' mean-spirited comments about other students. The clique's attempt to make her over forces her to take a stand and defy them.
Each girl begins to see the difference between friendship and popularity: being well-known vs. being well-liked.
Ms. Ignatow creates two believable tween characters and uses distinctive handwriting and drawing styles to differentiate their journal entries. Lydia writes in cursive while Julie prints. Lydia draws stick figures while Julie demonstrates budding artistic ability in her caricatures.
Secondary characters are also engaging. Melody, the unconventional loner, dispenses wise advice. And the parents are supportive, each in his or her own way, even if sometimes distracted.
Delly (short for Delaware) Pattison in "True (... Sort of)" by Katherine Hannigan (Greenwillow Books, ages 8-12) undergoes a change in attitude, and not for the better. As a young child she is full of joy, embracing the world and what it holds.
But somehow things always go wrong for her. Such as the time at age 6 when she set free the chickens from their pen at the county fair. Or the time she found a surpresent (surprise present) -- a pan of brownies -- on a neighbor's porch.
People call her "bad" and "thief."
Delly's gift for creating words leads her to create a cussictionary, a compendium of words she and her friends can use to curse without using swear words. That gets her a soapy mouth washing.
By age 11 Delly's smile is gone. She starts to believe she really is bad. She starts fighting, too. Her little brother, RB, teaches her to count before acting. That helps.
About this time a new kid shows up at school, a kid she at first takes for a boy. But Ferris Boyd is a girl who can't speak.
Ferris, shy and flighty as a bird, communicates by writing notes on a pad. Delly's curiosity leads her to spy on the strange newcomer, and the two outsiders become friends.
Ferris has one other friend, Brud Kinney. He spends Sundays shooting baskets with Ferris. Brud, a stutterer, is at ease with the silent Ferris, who doesn't expect him to talk.
The children help each other in ways the adults in their lives have not been able to. But when Delly sees brutal bruising on Ferris' back she is paralyzed. She knows she should do something but is afraid to believe what her eyes tell her to be true.
Ms. Hannigan writes compassionately about wounded children and the power of friendship and trust to build confidence and courage.
Cartoonist and author Patrick McDonnell touches hearts and minds with his daily comic strip "Mutts." In his most recent book, "Me ... Jane" (Little, Brown and & Company, all ages), he uses soft watercolor illustrations to tell the story of a young girl full of curiosity and wonder about nature.
In her excursions Jane is never without her toy chimpanzee, Jubilee, whom she treats with tender care. She spends her days exploring the out of doors and her nights dreaming of a life in Africa. She imagines living with animals like another Jane she reads about in Tarzan books.
The book's final illustration is a photograph that reveals the identity of the adult Jane, and Jane Goodall herself wrote the book's postscript.
Cartoonists, like picture book authors, have the most difficult of tasks: to distill their story into a few simple words and pictures. Mr. McDonnell is a skilled practitioner of this art, conveying emotion through simple dots and dashes.
His charming watercolors and text share the pages with detailed botanical and zoological engravings as well as a few illustrations made by Jane herself.
"Me ... Jane" inspires readers of all ages to follow their dreams and perhaps, in the achieving of them, make the world a better place.
First Published: August 16, 2011, 8:00 a.m.
