The Reading Warehouse

Friendship -- to be known, to be accepted as you are, to feel safe, especially when you are vulnerable. The girl in this story has recently arrived in Brooklyn with her family. On her very first day at school she meets a girl who almost instantly becomes her very best friend. She feels known, loved and accepted by her. But when she invites her friend to come for dinner with her family -- a family that feels free to eat weird food and, even worse, burst into song with their version of a sentimental classic of longing and homesickness -- something shifts and she no longer feels safe at all. What will it be like tomorrow at school?

Award-winning illustrator Alfonso Ruano's art beautifully depicts the depth of feeling that the friends experience in this story from acclaimed author and translator Elisa Amado, about how difficult it is to come from somewhere else and what a difference friendship can make.

Elisa Amado is a Guatemalan-born author and translator. Her books have been on the Américas Award Commended List and on USBBY's Outstanding International Books List. She lives in Toronto.

Alfonso Ruano is the illustrator of The Composition by Antonio Skármeta, winner of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and the UNESCO Tolerance Award and an Américas Award Commended title; Tricycle (El triciclo) by Elisa Amado, a USBBY Outstanding International Book; and Somos como las nubes / We Are Like the Clouds by Jorge Argueta, which was featured on many lists, including USBBY's Outstanding International Books and ALA Notable Children's Books. After three decades as the art director for Grupo SM, the world's largest publisher of Spanish-language children's books, he has left to devote more time to illustration and painting.