LILIBET MAKES A FRIEND

A girl who has only pretend friends opens her life to a real one.

Lilibet has “tons of friends.” There’s a catch, though: Her pals are imaginary. Still, they give Lilibet the confidence she needs to manage at school and make awesome things in her lab. One day when she’s outside gathering supplies, her classmate Peanut asks Lilibet about a drawing in her notebook; when she tells him it’s her plan for “making a friend,” Peanut offers to assist. He proves to be a great helper, which, it turns out, is an excellent quality in a non-imaginary friend—someone who, Lilibet comes to realize, can’t be expected to satisfy a list of conditions she has written in her notebook. What’s lovely and clever here is the way that Hamilton, without spelling it out, and McCloskey, who captures facial expressions with a few strokes, give young readers all they require to recognize what’s really going on: Lilibet’s imaginary friends aren’t meeting all her needs. Hamilton and McCloskey, who reliably delivers dynamic Procreate-colored scenes, bring a marvelous specificity to each aspect of this story. For Peanut, things aren’t just cool, they’re “cool-cool,” and readers are unlikely to find a picture book that makes more entertaining use of a pink Marie Antoinette wig. Lilibet has pinkish skin and a brown bob; Peanut has brown skin and a wavy reddish-brown undercut.

A friendship tale as unique as it is heartbreaking and as winsome as it is moving.