Mitch and Amy

Beverly Cleary's Mitch and Amy is a story for 8 year olds about twins who bicker all day long and then find something they have to face together.

What happens

Mitchell and Amy Huff are nine, about to start fourth grade, and in separate classes because grown-ups have decided twins should be separated.

The book opens with a row over a cereal box top. Then Amy picks a dandelion clock to make a wish on, and Mitchell cannot stop himself, and he creeps across the patio and blows all the seeds away before she can.

You know these two immediately. Amy reads miles above her age and plays pretend with her friend Marla. Mitch builds things. Their mum threatens to serve hot oatmeal three hundred and sixty-five days a year if they do not pack it in.

Then Mitchell takes his homemade skateboard down the hill, and two older boys coast up behind him.

What happens next is the engine of the whole book. Alan Hibbler smashes the skateboard against a bus stop sign until the wood splinters, bends the skate out of shape, and tells Mitchell to start running. There are two of them and they are both bigger. Mitchell runs. He hears them laughing behind him.

He knows running was the only thing he could have done. It does not help at all. He walks home thinking that Alan will know, and he will know, for the whole school year.

Cleary is unbelievably good at that feeling. Not the drama of it. The dull, hot, private shame afterwards.

So this one comes with a warning. The bullying is on the page from the first chapter and it keeps going. There are threats, a smashed toy, an older boy smoking a cigarette to look big, and the thrown board catches Mitchell in the back. Nobody is seriously hurt. If your child is dealing with something similar right now, read it alongside them or leave it a while.

For a child who is ready for it, though, this is a really useful book. It never pretends there is a clever trick that makes a bully stop.

It is American, so expect fourth grade and sidewalks, though nothing that will slow anybody down.

What to read next

If the squabbling sisters and brothers are the draw, Beezus and Ramona is about a sensible nine year old whose four year old sister wipes finger paint on the neighbours' cat and is about to get near her birthday party.