Cliques, Phonies, & Other Baloney

Cliques, Phonies, & Other Baloney by Trevor Romain and Elizabeth Verdick is a short, funny guide for 8 year olds about the groups at school that leave people out.

What happens

This one isn't a story. It's a proper little handbook, written straight to the child, in the sort of voice that would rather make them laugh than sit them down for a talk.

It starts by being honest about how a clique feels. Lonely. Scared. Unwelcome. Then it explains why they exist at all, which is the useful bit, because the answer turns out to be that everybody wants to belong and some people are frightened they don't.

After that come the lists. Four Dorky Things Cliques Do (they travel in a herd, they invent rules, they have a leader, they all dress the same). How to Spot a Phony. A quiz called Are You a Phony, with a last question asking whether you've been honest on the quiz. The Four Worst Tricks for dealing with a bad clique, which include getting your own back and pretending to be someone you're not.

The jokes do a lot of the work. Don't sit inside all day, it says, or a spider might build a web on your head. Don't tell someone to be your friend or they'll be sorry.

What makes it land is that one of the writers puts himself in it. He wanted to join the cool group so badly that he told everyone his family had a mansion with a heated pool, and then they turned up at his little house and saw the birdbath. He tried a cigarette to get in with the smokers and nearly threw up. He says all this about himself before asking your reader anything.

Something to know before you hand it over. It was written in the nineties, in America, and it shows. The vocabulary is mall and locker and Girl Scouts, and the addresses at the back are all American. Some of it will need translating, and the odd bit is no longer how any of us would put it.

It's also very short. A child can read it end to end in a sitting, or just pick up the bit they need.

What to read next

If that shape suits them, How to Take the Grr out of Anger does the same job for tempers. Same direct address to the reader, same quizzes and lists, same refusal to be solemn about it.