The Friendship War
by Andrew Clements
Intermediate, Middle School    Random    171 pp.    g
1/19    978-0-399-55759-0    $16.99    
Library ed. 978-0-399-55760-6    $19.99    
e-book ed. 978-0-399-55761-3    $9.99

You know this novel was once upon a time going to be called The Button War, but was beaten to it by a very different novel from Avi (rev. 9/18). But a button war is exactly what ensues when sixth grader Grace acquires boxes and boxes (and boxes) of old buttons courtesy of her grandfather, restoring an old factory building. At first, of course, it’s all fun and games as Grace’s classmates create a burgeoning economy in buttons, whether acquired from Grace or brought from home, with trading becoming sophisticated and subject to perceived rarity and — even in the course of a week! — shifting tastes. Things get ugly for Grace when she manages to snare a particularly attractive button her bossy best friend wants for herself, in a scene that is not only a model of friendship dynamics but of how wars get started: “But right now the main fact is, I have the pinwheel button clamped in my fist. And I am not giving it up.” Clements knows the appeal of projects, digging into the details of how it all would work with his characters serving as extra-bright and extra-sympathetic lab rats, responding to stimuli and refining their approaches. And he’s not afraid to engage his characters in abstract thinking, whether it’s about the law of supply and demand or the question of life after death, a chat about which Grace and her mother have one morning on the drive to school — you know, as one does.

From the January/February 2019 Horn Book Magazine.