Abstract
Reviewed by: Penny Draws a Best Friend by Sara Shepard Ally Byerly Shepard, Sara Penny Draws a Best Friend; written and illus. by Sara Shepard. Putnam, 2023 [272p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780593616772 $14.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780593616789 $8.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 3-5 Fifth-grader Penny Lowry is a worrier. She worries about her beloved dog, Cosmo, eating the remote control; about the bacteria lurking in the dirt under her fingernails; about the secret that has her parents acting so squirrely. One thing she never thought she'd have to worry about, however, was losing her best friend, Violet Vance, to their catty classmate, Riley Miller. Unmoored in the face of Violet's desertion, Penny turns to her diary for comfort and to Mrs. Hines, the school's "Feelings Teacher." Just as Penny is starting to grow comfortable with herself and make new friends, Violet and Riley return to her life, and Penny finds herself struggling between who she was, who she is, and who she wants to be. Shepard's illustrated middle-grade novel, relayed through Penny's doodles and diary entries, is imbued with humor, colorful characters, and the perilous dilemmas of childhood—from randomly assigned partners to the mortifying ordeal of eating alone in the cafeteria. Informal line drawings host a cast of wide-eyed characters with gangly, nervous limbs that complement the confessional nature of the narrative and the drive-by observational humor of its protagonist. Shepard carefully and successfully walks a tightrope in her treatment of Penny's worries by validating her feelings while suggesting that they should not be the only thing that guide her actions and choices. The epistolic format and the quirky, lovable main character will appeal to fans of Rachel Renée Russell's Dork Diaries and Svetlana Chmakova's Brave. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
Published Version
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