Secret Friends

Elizabeth Laird's Secret Friends is a quiet, heartbreaking story for 10 year olds about a girl who gives a classmate a cruel nickname on her very first day at secondary school.

What happens

Lucy bumps into Rafaella at the door of the school hall. Rafaella is tall and freckly, with ears that stick out. Lucy's nervous, and before she knows it she's laughing and calling her Earwig.

The other new kids hear it. And it sticks.

Lucy is telling the story looking back, and she's honest about it. She knows she could have stood up for Rafaella right then (and she tells you she'll regret that moment for the rest of her life).

Out of school, things are different. The two girls get off at the same bus stop, and one afternoon Rafaella asks her round for tea. Her house is full of books and rugs and honey sweets, with a gentle old dad and a mum who smiles with her whole face. Lucy loves it there.

But in school she keeps her distance. Being seen with Earwig is social death, and she's too busy trying to keep in with Kate and Sophie, the popular girls.

Reading it is like being inside Lucy's head, which isn't always comfortable. She isn't a bully exactly. She just wants to fit in so badly that she lets it happen. Who hasn't laughed along with something they knew wasn't fair?

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Rafaella dies. Over the Christmas holidays she has an operation to pin back her ears, and her heart gives way under the anaesthetic. It isn't in the background. The head teacher breaks the news to Lucy, and the rest of the story is her grief and guilt.

For a child who has lost someone, or who gets anxious about hospitals, that could be very hard. For a reader who's ready for something sad and honest, it's a powerful look at how small cruelties add up, and at why being a friend in secret isn't quite the same as being a friend.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, try Red Sky in the Morning by the same author. Anna is twelve and has practised in her head exactly what she'll do when the new baby comes, and the night her brother is born turns out nothing like she planned. It has the same mix of funny and sad.