Can Gemma and Alice remain best friends forever when one of them has to move away? A bestselling author delivers a charming, funny, and touching story that her new and younger girl fans are sure to adore. Illustrations.

Reviews

Gr 3-6-Gemma has always been a high-energy handful, and Alice has always been quiet and orderly-but those differences haven't stopped them from being best friends since the day they were born. Nothing will tear these two apart-except Alice's parents, who are making her move to Scotland. Gemma tries to cope, but she's overwhelmed by sadness and her fear that Alice might abandon her in favor of a new best friend. Her attempts to keep it together are complicated by her persona non grata status with Alice's parents. It takes a road trip and an incident with Alice's snooty new friend Flora to convince her that a best friend can move away without being lost forever. Wilson blends the spunk of Ramona Quimby with the impulsiveness of Joey Pigza, with the resulting disasters being about what one would expect. Gemma's emotional outbursts are understandable (if theatrical); she walks the fine line between grief-fueled temper and melodrama. If there are unsympathetic characters here, they are the girls' mothers: Gemma's mother's attempts at reassurance are to tell her daughter that she'll make new friends and will forget all about Alice; Alice's mother is pleased that the move separates the girls as she considers Gemma a bad influence. Readers will appreciate the reassurance that it's perfectly okay to feel sad and angry when a friend moves away.-Brandy Danner, Wilmington Memorial Library, MA Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

"Wilson is doing something important and rare. She's so good, it's exhilarating."--Philip Pullman
"Wilson blends the spunk of Ramona Quimby with the impulsiveness of Joey Pigza, with the resulting disasters being about what one would expect. . . . Readers will appreciate the reassurance that it's perfectly okay to feel sad and angry when a friend moves away."--"School Library Journal"
"While stories about best friends separated by moving are plentiful, Wilson's British fillip makes this one original, with Gemma's strong first-person voice and personality and Sharratt's black-and-white drawings in strip-style sketches before each chapter teasing the reader and forecasting the next turn of events."--"Kirkus Reviews""" "Believable, sympathetic characters; recognizable home and school situations; and plenty of humor (including some of the cake-in-the-face sort) will ensure that this becomes, like Wilson's other titles, a popular read for middle-grade girls."--"Booklist"