As that old song goes ‘Everybody needs somebody’—someone who understands and accepts you as you are, and can enter into your schemes and plans. The ‘someone’ in question need not be a romantic partner—often our closest relationships can be with a friend, who stands with you through thick or thin, and just gets you. But the corollary to this is that because our friendships are with people we can relate to, those to whom we can’t often get treated as outsiders and can feel isolated and alone. And the divisions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ can be such small and ultimately inconsequential things— skin tone, accent, nationality, hobbies. Be A Friend is a book which explores this idea—what happens to a child who is different from others, and processes the world in a manner other kids his/her age can’t relate to. They feel excluded and get isolated from others, making their world a fairly lonely one.
November 2016, volume 40, No 11