Friends with Boys -- Faith Erin Hicks
The McKays are homeschooled by their mother up until high school. At that point, they transition into the local public school. The three oldest—Lloyd, Zander, and Daniel—have already made the switch.
Now it's Maggie's turn to take the plunge.
At first, everything is pretty overwhelming—navigating the building, being surrounded by crowds all of the time, getting to know people that she's not related to—but she starts to get things figured out, and she even starts to make some friends.
Now, if she could only:
A) Come to terms with her mother's recent—and possibly permanant—departure.
B) Figure out why Daniel doesn't like her new friends, and why Lloyd and Zander don't seem to like each other anymore.
C) Get that darn ghost to stop stalking her.
Yes, you read that last one right. There's a ghost.
It's a family story, a friendship story, a high school story, a ghost story. And I loved every single page.
Loved the artwork, the facial expressions, the relationships between the characters. Loved the outing to see Alien, loved Lucy and Alistair, loved Lucy geeking out in the maritime museum. Loved the brothers, loved the action sequences, loved the combination of realism and cartoon-y anime-style in the illustrations. Loved that the characters were so real that any one of them could have been the protagonist, loved the juxtaposition of the ghost story and the departure of Mrs. McKay. Loved the pauses in conversation that said more than words would have, the subtleties of emotion, and that Hicks just lays the story out there and leaves it to the reader to take from it what they will.
Friends with Boys = TOTAL DELIGHT FROM EVERY ANGLE.
And you can read the first twenty pages at the author's website.
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Book source: ILLed through my library.
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Read for the 7th Annual 48-Hour Book Challenge.