Clementine Friend of the Week

Sara Pennypacker's Clementine Friend of the Week is a funny, warm story for 6 year olds about a girl who REALLY wants a good booklet.

What happens

It's Clementine's turn to be Friend of the Week! She'll lead the line, look after the class fish and tell everyone her life story. Best of all, on Friday every kid in the class writes something nice about her in a booklet to take home.

Her upstairs neighbour Margaret has one already. It's full of compliments about how neat and organised Margaret is. Clementine starts to panic. What will anyone write about her?

So she has a plan. Compliments! That goes about as well as you'd expect (she tells the lunch lady her hairnet looks like a hornet's nest). Then presents. Free tattoos at recess, in felt tip, which ends with a trip to the principal. Again.

Clementine tells the story herself and it's so much fun to be inside her head. She notices everything. She gives her little brother a different vegetable name every time she mentions him. She's cross with Margaret one minute and hurt by her the next, and you can feel both.

Her family are lovely too. Her dad is the building manager and keeps a basement full of decorations for every made-up holiday going. Her mum is an artist who can't stand anything plastic.

Then, near the end of the week, something happens at home that knocks Clementine sideways. Her kitten Moisturizer goes missing. It's sad and a bit worrying for a while (no spoilers here about how that bit goes!).

If your reader has ever worried whether people actually like them, they'll recognise a lot of this. It's gentle, it's very funny, and Clementine's big heart shines through.

What to read next

For more of Clementine and Margaret, try the book simply called Clementine. That's the one with the hair-cutting disaster at school that Principal Rice still hasn't forgotten.