When I was at school, Friendship Day was associated with all kinds of secrecy. We would hide writing boards under our desks, and make friendship bands while pretending to listen to the teacher. Friendship bands would get confiscated, much to our indignation. They came under the category of ‘ornaments’, which were prohibited. Some girls made beautiful friendship bands and their chosen friends wore those bands like badges of honour, hiding them in their pockets whenever teachers were around.
Today, Friendship Day makes me smile. Yes, friendship is something I treasure, and I try hard to write about. I try to give it the warmth and passion that infuses the friendship of childhood. Not long ago, a child wrote a book review of The Prophecy of Rasphora, featuring three friends – Tara, Vandana and Afreen. It warmed my heart that the review referred to the three as sisters.
Friendship in fiction is special. So often, I find the most beautiful form of friendship in children’s literature, so here, I put together five times fictional friendship won my heart in the recent past. I’ve written about lifelong fictional friends before, but here are a few more.
Alexa, Michael, Tom, Josie and Ahmet (The Boy at the Back of the Class)
I finished reading The Boy at the Back of the Class last night, which is why this is the first set of friends to come to mind. How much are we willing to do for our friends? What about if it is an ’emerjency’? Can we throw caution to the winds, be brave and act, even if it means hiding from our parents, simply because we know we must?
Ahmet knows he has the best friends ever, and he is not wrong. When Alexa, Michael, Tom and Josie learn that the gates of the United Queendom (as they call it) are to be closed to refugees, they are aghast, for how will Ahmet’s parents ever find him? They have a mission. They need to make sure that Ahmet is reunited with his family. He is their friend, so there is no limit to what they will do to make their mission a success.
Chloe and Lakshmi (The Misfits)
The friendship between Chloe and Lakshmi in The Misfits is not perfect, but it shines through at the perfect moment. Flawed friendship that triumphs during a crisis unfailingly wins my heart. Chloe is afraid of making choices that project a version of herself that is not cool enough. How will the super-rich, fancy Anvi ever be her friend if Chloe makes the wrong choice of friends? And so, her friendship with Lakshmi is one of those things that, by tacit agreement, is slightly secret. Yet, at the moment when it is required most of all, we discover that Chloe can be a good friend after all. We make mistakes, but a truly lovely friendship can emerge despite them.
Arthur and Mister P (Me and Mister P)
Mister P is a polar bear. He does not even speak. Yet, Arthur finds his best best friend in this polar bear who turns up on his doorstep.
The friendship between Arthur and Mister P speaks to me especially because Arthur is not a perfect child. He resents the attention given to his brother Liam, who is differently abled. He is angry, feels unloved and is determined to run away–until Mister P shows up. What can Arthur do except let him in?
The way their friendship develops is heart-warming. Also lovely is the fact that Mister P gives the warmest bear hugs of all!
The Bubble Street Gang (Making Millions)
What do friends do for one another? At the Bubble Street Gang, the answer to that would be ‘anything’, and I love that. Cass cannot understand why her friend Nicholas would want to go for yet another class, but that’s what he wants, so Cass accepts it. The problem is that his parents refuse to pay for it. It’s time for the three friends – the Bubble Street Gang – to do their job. This wonderful idea of friendship, that friends must and will do everything for one another, is heart-warming. Friends come up with solutions for one another. They don’t hesitate. They don’t make excuses. They act.
Jackson and Crenshaw (Crenshaw)
Surely, there comes a time when you grow out of imaginary friends. Especially if you are as fond of facts as Jackson is. Yet, suddenly, Jackson’s imaginary friend Crenshaw reappears. He is a gigantic cat and Jackson cannot get rid of him, however embarrassed he is by Crenshaw’s presence.
The friendship between the boy and the imaginary cat is truly lovely, especially because it brings back the age-old idea that friends are around when you need them the most. So what if the said friend is imaginary? A friend is a friend is a friend.
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