When Friendship Followed Me Home by Paul Griffin (review)

For most of his life Ben bounced from foster home to foster home, but two years ago, the then ten-year-old boy was taken in by kind Ms. Coffin, and his life has been tremendously better since. When Ben brings a scraggly little alley dog home, she happily accepts him and the little guy turns out to be quite the charmer. He introduces Ben to Rainbow Girl (aka Halley), a girl at the library in rainbow clothes, who shares Ben’s love of sci-fi. When Ms. Coffin dies suddenly, Ben is sent to live with his aunt and alcoholic uncle who hits Ben and kicks the dog; Ben runs away, and then Halley’s cancer returns. The plot is overstuffed, to say the least, as Griffin zips through predictable tropes (including the manic pixie dream girl) while never allowing any element to breathe and develop by itself. The result is a messy book that holds readers at arm’s length even as it tries to tug at their heartstrings. It’s Ben who really saves the novel: his stoic demeanor in the face of loss after loss seems authentic for someone who’s never really known stability, and his voice has the hesitant excitement of a kid who’s hoping for the best but expecting the worst. The dialogue between Ben and Halley is snappy and smart (think John Green for middle-graders), and the sci-fi story the two friends write together reveals the emotions behind their wit. Hand this to kids who like their bittersweet endings to come only after a heap of tragedies.