What do you do when you’re the new girl at school? If you’re Lissy, you make a friend. A paper friend. And to Lissy’s surprise, her little origami bird opens his eyes and says hello! So she quickly makes more friends. And soon Lissy has more friends than she can count!But what do you do when your friends have to leave? If you’re Lissy, you make another friend . . . but this time one that stays.Utterly imaginative and charming, Lissy’s Friends is a fresh take on the importance of friendship. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

K-Gr 2-Lissy, a new girl at school, discovers that her imagination can help her make friends when an inspiration comes from an unlikely source. Sitting alone in the cafeteria, she folds her menu into a little paper crane. (If the story has a bumpy moment, this is it. A school cafeteria table that offers a menu is unusual if not an anomaly.) She names the paper figure "Menu," and it can blink and flutter its wings. Lissy's mom asks her if she has made any friends that day at school and she truthfully replies, "I did make one friend." She makes many more, but when she leads the origami cats, dogs, birds, and a giraffe to the playground, they are swept away by a gust of wind. A girl named Paige returns Menu to Lissy and asks if she'll show her how to make a crane of her own. Well-illustrated directions for folding a paper crane are appended. The illustrations are bright and variously patterned, much like a busy Matisse, but also call to mind quality origami paper. Children will find the artwork compelling and the story of making friends of interest.-Teresa Pfeifer, Alfred Zanetti Montessori Magnet School, Springfield, MA Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

During her first day at her new school, Lissy feels ignored, so while eating lunch alone, she creates an origami bird to keep her company. Then the bird, which she names Menu, magically flutters to life. With Menu in her pocket, Lissy feels better, and she folds more paper friends. At the playground, Lissy spins her menagerie on the merry-go- round and loses them in the wind, but happily, a girl finds and returns Menu, and a new friendship begins. With a minimal, evenly paced text, Lin's story captures authentic new-student feelings. Like many kids, Lissy works through her loneliness privately, rather than by telling a parent, but her inventive methods will reassure kids. Lin's bright, cheerful paintings, enlivened with colorful, origami-paper-inspired patterns, boost the story's comforting tone, and a final image, showing Lissy's blown-away paper friends in Paris enjoying coffee, adds to the whimsy. Origami instructions appear on the endpapers. A solid choice for children harboring new-school anxieties, this will partner well with Helen Stephens' Blue Horse (2003), which has a similar premise.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2007 Booklist From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.