eta2: Winner is Kayla. Expect an email from me shortly!
Welcome readathoners! It's Hour 15, I hope everyone's readings are going along speedily.
The theme of this hour's mini-challenge is Friendship. Often an aspect that sadly falls to the wayside when we review/talk about books, let's all take a moment to celebrate a good depiction of the blossoming of friendship for the first time. Who doesn't recall vividly the moment when Anne and Diana from Canada's beloved children's series Anne of Green Gables declared themselves kindred spirits? A show of the first time we make friends can stay with us.
This mini-challenge invites you to share a memorable friendship forming moment in any of the books you've read in your life. The moment when two people click, and they knew they were going to be friends for ever. Please leave the name of title/author of the book, the name of the characters, and explain why you liked this moment.
As one should lead by example, here's mine:
My absolute favourite friendship forming moment is in one middle-grade book (which I suspect may be not very well known) called Losing Forever by Gayle Friesen. I loved her flashback moment of how Dell and Jes became friends as kids. It was just so sweet, so perfect, and Friesen's perfect spot on writing made everything stick that much more in my head, her last lines of that flashback floating in my head over and over the first time I read it. It still has that effect on me. Will quote the passage-
Dell and I became friends in grade three. Until then I had mostly hung out with same, but he was going through his "girls are yucky" phase and I was stranded. When the teacher had changed the seating arrangement in the classroom, Dell and I were seated next to each other. I admired her curly, red hair because it looked like campfire and I told her so.
Her eyebrows shot way up and I thought at first I'd insulted her, but she dove for a notepad in her backpack and I saw her scribbling down my compliment word for word. I noticed her "p" was backward.That last line. It gets to me, every time.<3
"That was descriptive," she whispered.
"Good word," I whispered back.
The teacher made us stay in at recess for talking and Dell drilled me with questions as we cleared the chalk brushes. Where did I live? What was my favorite color? (Hers was fuchsia.) Wasn't Basketball Ballerina the best book ever? (I didn't know, but I said I'd read it.) How many brothers and sisters did I have? (She had a very mean sister named Pammy.)
I'd grown silent for a second, but then I told her what I had not yet said out loud to another person. "My sister died."
All of eight years old, she had wrapped her arm around my shoulder. She'd said nothing, but I saw a big tear fall to the floor. Our friendship was forged on chalk dust and a tear. (pg. 19-20)
Please leave your answer in the comments with a valid email address as a way of contacting you and a winner will be chosen with Random.Org.
Prizes: A mystery (possibly lightly used) book that has friendship as a central theme, along with some bookmark swag. Ships internationally.
