Starred Review ALA Booklist

Starred Review How does it feel when your longtime best friend dumps you, casually, for no special reason? Many middle-schoolers will relate to Debbie's bewilderment, denial, and loneliness when Maureen, her intimate friend since third grade, suddenly starts spending all her time with another classmate, Glenna (Maureen saw something in Glenna that I could not see. I leave it to her biographers, or maybe to microbiologists, to discover what that is). Debbie's first-person narrative is sharp, funny, uneasy, spiteful, fragile. The casual, lovely words give voice to what she hardly knows is true until she says them. Perkins, whose picture books include Home Lovely (1996), writes in this first novel with a clear simplicity about emotional muddle, using occasional, tiny black-and-white pictures to express Debbie's viewpoint through particular details. Gradually, as the chapters move from April through December, Debbie reaches outward. People help her, and she helps a troubled classmate. She finds moments of empathy with a teacher, a neighbor, her mother, a stranger. She discovers how sometimes laughing and crying are almost the same thing. The last chapter, in which her family joins a neighbor's multigenerational Christmas celebration, reads like a set piece. Even so, it is a fine climax to a realistic coming-of-age story that never minimizes Debbie's loss, even as she finds friendship in a widening world. (Reviewed September 1, 1999)

Horn Book

Sketched simply, this exceptional first novel is a story about the year two best friends became quietly less so; painted fully, it's a portrait of a girl's (and an author's) intent observation of the ordinary, and the power of language to make it art. Debbie's adjustment (a far too clinical word for the resolutely down-to-earth story) is painful but unmelodramatic, and her wry little pen drawings reveal a sense of humor and proportion that will serve her well.

Kirkus Reviews

In a quiet, introspective novel, Debbie, 13, faces one of the worst things that can happen to the young; she's lost a best friend, Maureen, to a boring, rather unpleasant classmate, Glenna. With carefully observed details and moments, picture-book creator Perkins (Clouds for Dinner, 1997, etc.) shows why Debbie can believe that she'll never have a happy day again. Of course, there are others around, such as her new neighbor, the worldly Maria, and girls from school, but none of them is as wonderful as Maureen. Debbie finds herself hating Glenna, but a kindly teacher helps her realize that Glenna didn't "take" Maureen—Maureen left. It all adds up to a just examination of one of the small but piercing sorrows of growing up, with a cast of arresting characters, freckles of humor, and black-and-white drawings that enhance the muted tale; Perkins gives the significance of friendship its due, and then some. (Fiction. 10-12)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">PW called this first novel about a 13-year-old girl's feelings of abandonment when her best friend finds a new buddy "a lively coming-of-age story filled with touching moments." Ages 10-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Mar.)