Integrating third-person narrative with entries from fifth-grader Dreenie's journal, Hamilton (Second Cousins) poignantly traces the evolution of an unusual friendship. When she starts a new school, Dreenie feels drawn to a frail classmate named Nathalie, whom everyone calls """"Bluish"""" (""""This girl is like moonlight. So pale you see the blue veins all over""""). Sitting in her wheelchair, always wearing a cap (""""like half a bowl"""") and carrying a puppy (""""Nobody brings a dog to school!""""), Bluish at first seems unapproachable, but Dreenie is determined to edge carefully closer. She succeeds at winning the girl's trust while helping to break down the barrier that separates Bluish from the other students. Spare prose expresses each stage of the girls' relationship, which sometimes appears as fragile as Bluish herself. Hamilton effectively weaves in details about Dreenie's Amsterdam Avenue neighborhood in New York, her school and her attention-hungry sidekick, Tulie, adding dimension and solidity to the story. The girl's nickname also introduces an understated exploration of what it means to be different. Readers will come to cherish Dreenie's openheartedness, just as Dreenie comes to cherish her new-found friend. Ages 9-14. (Oct.)

At first, Dreenie doesn't know what to make of Natalie, the sick girl in a wheelchair who is part of her fifth-grade class in a New York City magnet school. The kids call Natalie Bluish, not because of her ethnicity (her dad's black and her mom's Jewish) but because her pale skin has a bluish tint caused by all the chemotherapy she's had for cancer. Dreenie tries to be nice, but she's scared (What if she dies? What if I die?), and Bluish demands respect, not pity; she hates people who hover like a helicopter. Hamilton tells rather than shows Dreenie's growing bond with Bluish, but through Dreenie's eyes--in journal entries and sharp vignettes--we watch Bluish becoming part of the dynamic classroom. What's best is the funny, touching portrait of another classmate, Tuli, who is so needy that she pretends to be Spanish (Hokay, ho-ney, we take care. Cuidado!). She desperately wants to be Dreenie's best pal, and Dreenie is sorry for Tuli, but it's Bluish who is Dreenie's soulmate. Hamilton gets the way kids talk. Like Bluish, she makes us stop and look. Many readers will be caught by the jumpy, edgy story of sorrow and hope, of kids trying to be friends. (Reviewed September 15, 1999)

Dreenie, new to an "arty-darty" magnet school in upper Manhattan, desperately wants a best friend. Tuli, a brash but insecure classmate, quickly latches onto Dreenie, who instead finds herself drawn to another classmate, Natalie, who has leukemia. The complexities of friendship among the three fifth-grade girls are eloquently explored in this short, accessible novel.

A child coming off chemotherapy wins new friends and acceptance from her class in this short, upbeat tale from Hamilton (Second Cousins, 1998, etc.). At first, Dreenie doesn't know what to make of the girl, Natalie, who is in a wheelchair and knit cap, and who is called "Bluish" by the fifth graders not because she's black and Jewish (as Natalie's mother assumes), but because her skin is translucent. New herself, Dreenie quickly finds the right mix of distance and intimacy to be comfortable around her moody, fragile classmate, and soon others are gathering, too—especially after Natalie presents everyone with a wool cap like hers. Hamilton tells the tale from Dreenie's point of view, moving back and forth between first and third person, sketching feelings and reactions in quick, vivid strokes: "[Bluish] made me care about what was all so scary, so sad and so hurt with her too. To me she is just Bluish child, Bluish ill serious. Bluish close with us. Someday Bluish just like us./Maybe." While Natalie's future remains clouded, the story's tone is set by the pains, and the pleasures, of the moment: exchanging gifts, banter, friendship, and respect. The three children in Leo and Diane Dillons' jacket painting are misleadingly grave, but the designs in their knit caps and scarves evoke the author's poetic, richly textured prose. (Fiction. 9-11)

When she starts at a new school, Dreenie feels drawn to a frail classmate, whom everyone calls "Bluish." In a starred review, <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">PW said, "Readers will come to cherish Dreenie's openheartedness." Ages 9-12. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(June)