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Jan Carr's Not Really Buddies is a very funny first-day-of-school story for 7 year olds about a boy whose brand-new year doesn't go to plan.
Buddy (and yes, that's his real name) is starting second grade. He's sure it's going to be great. All his friends are in his class. He also just knows his teacher will be Jabari, who takes his class bird-watching with binoculars. Jabari winked at him on the last day of first grade, after all.
It isn't Jabari. It's a brand-new teacher called Ms. Maple. And then there's Bea.
Bea is new too. She bursts in late with blood on her trainer and a row of stitches she's VERY happy to show everyone. She calls Buddy "Finley". She holds his wrist "like a bracelet". She tries to flatten his sticky-up hair with spit (and then with the mayonnaise from his lunch).
Buddy isn't having it. He's a bit of a daydreamer and he likes things the way he expected them to be. Bea is nothing like that. By bedtime he's decided she's "buzzy".
The whole book is one very long first day, packed with the small disasters that feel ENORMOUS when you're little. Buddy starts a pencil-sharpening queue by accident. He tells the class a story about a burglar that turns out to be a moth. And he gets stuck between two urinals, and Bea tries to rescue him with a plunger!
You're right inside Buddy's head the whole time, so you feel every bit of his embarrassment and outrage. It's funny, but it's kind too. His two dads are lovely at bathtime, and Ms. Maple turns out to be much nicer than he first thought.
Who hasn't had a classmate who drove them up the wall on day one? If you've got a reader who's just started a new class, or who's about to, they'll probably recognise a lot of this.
There's a sweet little family chat at the end of the day too, with the class talking about all the different kinds of family they come from.
If they enjoyed Buddy's suspicions, Captain Awesome and the New Kid has two superhero-mad best friends who are sure whoever is moving in down the street must be an alien spy.
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