Review of The New Friend

The New Friend
by Charlotte Zolotow; illus. by Benjamin Chaud
Primary    Milky Way    48 pp.    g
11/21    978-1-990252-01-3    $17.99

The narrator of this picture book had a dear friend and reminisces about the ordinary things they used to do together — until the “dear friend” found a “different friend.” Zolotow’s gentle, introspective text, honest about the narrator’s anger and sadness, is now accompanied by new but vintage-feeling illustrations from Chaud, which carefully adhere to the speaker’s point of view, giving only limited information about the “different friend.” In particular, illustrations of a dream sequence imaginatively depict a nighttime-subconscious version of the woods where the children played and of a “new friend” for the speaker. A hopeful but not too neat story of a situation likely to be relatable to many.

From the January/February 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

Shoshana Flax

Shoshana Flax, associate editor of The Horn Book, Inc., is a former bookseller and holds an MFA in writing for children from Simmons University. She has served on the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and Sydney Taylor Book Award committees, and is serving on the 2025 Walter Dean Myers Award committee.

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