You Will Be My Friend

You Will Be My Friend by Peter Brown
2011

     Lucy is back! After realizing that Children Make Terrible Pets, she decides that today is the perfect day to get back out there and find a new friend.  She is so excited! "I cannot wait to make a new friend! We're going to do cartwheels! And have picnics! And climb trees! And go swimming! And have dance party!"  Lucy tries to hang out with a group of frogs at a pond, but when she jumps in, she splashes all the water out. No pond, no frogs.  Things are not looking good.  She tries squeezing into a burrow, climbing trees, even dressing up as a kangaroo.  But as hard as she tries, things don't work out and Lucy finds herself frustrated and lonely.  She tries a new method: imposing her friendship of others. "Come back here and have fun with me!" She even scolds a little egg:   "You WILL be my friend! I can wait."  But nothing. Then finally, when she's about to give up and screams "Doesn't anybody want to be my friend?!" A bow-tie wearing Flamingo -a perfect match for Lucy's tutu- approaches her to give the book a perfect ending...there's cartwheeling, swimming, and dancing...just as she had wanted.
     You Will Be My Friend  is hilarious.  Peter's Brown text and illustrations complement each other beautifully, with some of the story being driven by the text bubbles and others just by the illustrations. I loved the page where Lucy is trying to calm herself down...I want to have that page as a poster in my classroom.  There are some cool details to discover during careful reads, like the foreshadowing of Lucy's visit to the frog pond -which you can see in the previous page as she walks away from home.  I believe I also saw a fish wearing a hat that I associate with Peter Brown.   It's a great read aloud that will have kids laughing the whole time.
Fish with Peter Brown's hat.  Forshadowing of the pond