The Friendship Riddle is a very long book and at times the reading felt like a marathon but if you can put in the effort the final scenes are rewarding. Oddly this is another book about spelling bees. I seem to have read quite a few lately - perhaps this is a new genre. It is also about solving cryptic puzzles and reminded me of Mr Lemoncello's library. At the heart of this book though is our need for friendship and the importance of truthful communication as our friendships ebb and flow.
Here are a few books I have read recently with competitions including spelling bees :
Ruth had a best friend but now the girls have reached middle school Charlotte has made friends with one of the 'cool girls' called Melissa. She no longer talks to Ruth.
"It's not like she ditched me or we had a fight. It's like all this shifting and sorting out happened. Like we were dumped into a colander, and all of us small, less interesting pieces fell through and left the big, juicy berries inside. Charlotte is a berry. Me, I'm a lone world. I'm that hawk flying above it all, the quiet observer on the sidelines. And that's the way I like it."
Ruth is an avid reader of a book series called Taryn Greenbottom by Harriet Wexler. This is a fictitious book series and I did like the way Megan Frazer Blakemore wove it through this book. Here is one of the riddles found by Ruth. There are twelve in total. They are found in a random order and this help keep the plot moving forward.
The Friendship Riddle will be added to our senior collection for our Grade Six students. It does discuss issues of puberty and same sex relationships and probably will have more appeal to girls.
You can read a little more about this book on the author web site. I agree with the comments here from Ms Yingling. Jen Robinson liked this book and she makes some interesting observations in her review.
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