The Pages Between Us

December 1, 2015

Gr 4-6-Besties Olivia and Piper have spent a great deal of their 11 years together, and now it's time to tag team middle school. The girls pass a notebook back and forth to stay connected when their daily face time is limited to one measly French class. They fill the pages with notes, text message printouts, a classmate's blog posts, gratitude lists, and other keepsakes for posterity. When Piper's parents promise her a birthday party with 12 friends, the girls admit they must branch out in order to populate a gathering filled with enough drama to rival Piper's favorite soap opera. They capitalize on an eclectic list of school club offerings to expand their duo, in a quest that will determine whether differing interests lead to different friends. A cousin to Rachel Renee Russell's "Dork Diaries" (S. & S.) and the like, this is a gentler version of middle school, as the girls support each other through familiar trials such as overcoming shyness, making new friends, dealing with lunchroom anxiety, and coping with crushes. While the sweet protagonists may be refreshing to some, the book lacks the drama that makes other chronicle-style tales so popular, until the action picks up near the very end. The main characters' lengthy notes often contain too much backstory to be believable correspondence between two best friends, and the secondary characters disappointingly lack diversity. VERDICT An additional purchase that will be enjoyed by strong readers eager to devour realistic fiction with a multimedia slant.-Lindsay Jensen, Nashville Public Library

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2015
Sixth-grade friends chronicle their transition to middle school in a shared journal. When best friends Piper and Olivia discover they have only one class together, they start a shared journal to communicate with each other. While the girls vow to remain best friends, each feels socially adrift at school. Piper's unexpected opportunity to have a special birthday party motivates the girls to devise a plan to join school clubs in order to widen their social circles. From badminton to spelling bees, the girls valiantly search for a club that suits them, with some comical and a few calamitous results. Leavitt and Mellom address the self-consciousness and uncertainties of navigating social life in middle school. Their astute observations also reveal the girls' family concerns: Piper yearns for personal attention amid her bevy of siblings, while Olivia longs for her father's time and approval. As each girl struggles to find her niche, their journal entries become increasingly self-reflective. With their interests diverging, their friendship reaches a crisis point as the date of Piper's party approaches. The book's format, featuring journal entries between the girls, emails, text messages, and blog posts, combines with Dening's whimsical artwork to create the feel of a well-tended journal. Leavitt and Mellom's humorous and perceptive tale deftly explores the quandary of how to sustain a cherished friendship while nurturing individual growth. (Fiction. 9-13)

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July 1, 2016
Via a shared secret notebook as well as other notes, chats, and texts, overdramatic Piper and brainy Olivia (and occasionally others) tell the story of their transition into middle school and their discovery of diverging interests. The humor in both girls' voices makes for a breezy read, and tweens will likely relate to the evolving-friendship conflict.

(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)