The Friendship Matchmaker
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Lara Zany is known throughout the school yard as the Friendship Matchmaker-kids who need to make or keep a best friend call on her expertise and follow her hard-and-fast rules to find friendships. Lara's documented everything from friendship categories (the BOBF, or Bus Only Best Friend; the NL, or Nerdy Loner; the LBC, or Loner By Choice) to strategies (MAKF, or Make and Keep Friends; BTFP, or Bus Trip Faux Pas). And she's sure that her manual will one day be published by none other than Harry Potter's publishers.
But when new kid in school Emily Wong questions whether following such unbendable rules is really the way to true friendship, Lara and Emily decide to compete by each finding a LL a best friend. But Lara, a LBC, doesn't bank on finding her own best friendship in the most unlikely of places... In the tradition of Clueless or Emma, this is a funny and heartwarming story of celebrating individuality and finding acceptance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seventh-grader Lara Zany is the self-proclaimed "official Friendship Match maker" of Potts County Middle School, and she is drafting a manual filled with her top tips to send to "Harry Potter's publishers" when it's complete. Unfor tunately, Lara is so busy coaching her "clients" on how to talk, dress, and on what not to bring for lunch or do at recess that she has no time to dwell on her own lack of friends. A transfer student from another school, Emily Wong, shakes up all the rules ("Cartoon-inspired dress choices in seventh grade? Dolphins? This was without a doubt the worst case of RFP I'd ever come across," says a horrified Lara) and bets Lara that she can't match up one of her most difficult "Terminal Total Loner" classmates. Australian author Abdel-Fattah (Where the Streets Had a Name) navigates the intricacies of middle school relationships and social challenges via a well-meaning protagonist whose enthusiasm never flags. Readers will quickly see the end of Lara's tale coming but still be pleased by the happy, slightly rushed denouement. Ages 8 12.
