Flower Power 2 - Friendship Rules, by Judy Lindquist (Taylor and Seale Publishing, $16.95, 189 pp, 2022) Review by Skye Anderson
Returning friends but fifth-graders now - Lily, Violet and Rose are best buds but also very different. Each has her own special qualities and skills, from running a 5-K (at their Florida school, students can pick one club each year) to organizing food drives to starting a business to writing for the school paper. One is on the school safety patrol, one has toddler sibling quadruplets, and one desperately wants her parents to think she is responsible and no longer a baby who needs a babysitter herself. They encounter a new friend with diabetes, one with a quick temper, and another new friend whose sister is physically abusing her so she takes it out on others by saying mean things to hurt them. What a quandry: should our 'flower girl' tell the school counselor and risk losing this new friend?
Their lives are typical for students about to enter middle school. This book and each character is very real! This reviewer loved it!
Each girl has issues to work through but by page 189 if they haven't solved theirs, they have made new friends and gone a long way toward emotional growth, if not by experiencing situations themselves then by reliving them from afar in others whom they try to help.
The parents, however, are not fully drawn which is just fine - each parent is the ideal parent who helps her daughter eventually choose the right solution to her particular situation: the parents don't interfere but help their girls think through a problem and support their actions which turn out to be the right ones. That is maturity.
Amazing Title Says it All!
Did you notice the three girls all have flower names? Lily. Violet. Rose. They are powerful friends, together, even though they are assigned different homerooms this year.
Your young reader will surely identify more with one than the other two - or maybe share one or two traits with all of them.
Each chapter focuses on one of the flower girls until we reach the end of the book - the title of the final chapter is Rose, Lily and Violet. The girls complement each other and stick together through thick and thin, through misunderstandings and quick tempers only to come together again as true friends would. Friendship is truly powerful.
Wow!
Where has author Judy Lindquist been? This book is so inspiring, so riveting that this reviewer is going to read the first book in the series as soon as possible!
Although it is not yet time to pick the Book of the Year, Friendship Rules is the only one so far in the running!
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