Editorial Content for The Friendship Riddle

Sometimes friendship can seem like a riddle. Your used-to-be best friend hardly speaks to you now. What happened? What changed?

  I admire Blakemore’s cleverness in creating the riddles sprinkled throughout the book.

In THE FRIENDSHIP RIDDLE by Megan Frazer Blakemore, Ruth and Charlotte used to be friends --- really close friends. However, things changed between them when they started growing up, and now Charlotte has a new best friend.  When Ruth finds a riddle tucked into an old book, her first instinct is to share it with Charlotte, since they used to play riddle games together. Charlotte’s not interested in solving it, but when she tells Ruth she found a riddle, too, Ruth’s curiosity is piqued. She wants to solve the clues, but she can’t do it by herself.

I enjoyed THE FRIENDSHIP RIDDLE for several reasons. For one, I admire Blakemore’s cleverness in creating the riddles sprinkled throughout the book. I actually solved a couple of them as I was reading, and was very proud of myself! I also liked Blakemore’s fast-paced and interesting writing style, and the fact that the book didn’t end the way that I expected it to.

However, I was confused about something that happened early on in the book --- Ruth’s mom asks Ruth why “snowy-day quiet is different from a regular quiet,” and she’s hurt when Ruth responds by saying “I’ll look it up. I do have all day.” I didn’t understand why this would upset her. However, I read an advanced uncorrected proof of the book, so perhaps this has been addressed in the final copy of the story.

All in all, if you enjoy riddles, you will enjoy reading THE FRIENDSHIP RIDDLE!