Best Wishes

Becca is having her worst day ever: Harper, her best friend, stops being her friend; she forgets her math homework; she is locked in bathroom for 45 minutes; her hives get worse, and she has no friends, and then the parcel arrives. The parcel includes a poem which tells her that, because she is blue, she received the magic bracelet which includes one wish, but take care and beware. It also says that she will know whom to send it to when she doesn’t need it anymore. She wishes that everyone will want to be her friend.

What she doesn’t realize is that there are negative reactions when everyone wants to buy her lunch, come to her birthday party, sit beside her, dress like her, and she begins to understand that she doesn’t want people to only like her because of the magic. From going from not really a student-of-the-week kind of kid to being student-of-the-week, Becca starts to use her popularity to help others. She begins to realize what is important to her. Becca realizes that making friends takes work, but she needs to open the window and step outside her comfort zone.

The story provides a humorous account of life in New York and what can happen when you get what you think you want. There are excellent details which provided a great picture of the setting, details such as, “All around us I could hear the sounds of the city: taxicabs honking, buses pulling up, people hurrying to the subway.” (p. 2) There was a wealth of local colour which helped the reader picture what was going on throughout the story. Also included were black and white drawings of some of the scenes in the book which added interest and clarity. Great dialogue was evident, with humour and realistic vocabulary. The sentence length was varied with many short sentence and phrases for effect. Best Wishes was a very readable novel.

I enjoyed the themes in this book which were very appropriate to the intended audience. Friendship and what it means and how to be a friend are important aspects found in Best Wishes, the first book in a series. Also, the book shows how there could be unexpected consequences when someone gets what they think they want. Change being positive also plays into this story. Best Wishes would make a good addition to a library or classroom collection and could be used as a read-aloud selection. The second book in the series will continue the story of the bracelet and its next recipient.