Bluish (by Virginia Hamilton)

In this story based on the author's own positive family experience of cross-cultural living, three fifth-grade girls come together and learn tolerance and compassion for each other in an urban school environment. Their friendship centers around a girl called Bluish, who struggles with leukemia in and out of remission.

In her unique tone and style, Virginia Hamilton tells the story of an uncommon friendship among three girls. The story is told in short episodes of third-person narrative, interrupted by Dreenie's first-person journal entries. This shift in perspective is sometimes confusing because the journal entries include events in real time and dialogue, rather than staying inside Dreenie's mind as observations.

A few of the scenes are stilted and border on didactic, as when the teacher explains Bluish's illness to the class and when her classmates learn about the dreidel. Hamilton's strength is in her language innovations, the way she tweaks a single word in a sentence to give it sound and personality. She never dwells on illness and cancer; rather, she reaches across it to explore the intricacies of friendship despite differences.

Author: Virginia Hamilton
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Publication date: January 1, 1999
Number of pages: 127
Paperback price: $4.99