Oh, Top Ten Tuesday, how I love you! Because, who doesn’t love a list? This week is to list our literary best friends, the people from the books we’ve read.
1. Mena from Evolution, Me and Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande – I have shouted my love of this book from the rooftops and I really wish I could be friends with Mena in real life. She’s stands up for what she believes in, even if she doesn’t really feel like a hero, or even very brave. Everyone in her small town, including her parents and her school, turn against her, but she stands by what she did.
2. Cat from Fat Cat by Robin Brande – But Mena isn’t the only wonderful girl that Brande has written about that I want to be friends with – there’s also Cat. Cat, overweight and an over achiever, turns herself into a science experiment when she eats only what early hominids would eat. She discovers herself along the way and might fall in love, too. Weight is such a taboo topic in literature, heavy characters are either funny or tragic, or they lose a lot of weight and suddenly become happy or, the opposite, depressed. If a character is overweight, it defines them. Yes, Fat Cat focuses a lot on Cat’s weight, but that is never, ever what defines her.
3. Leelee from Say the Last Word by Jeannine Garsee – Leelee was such a good friend to Shawna, I wanted to be her friend too.
4. Gertrude from Runaways by Brian Vaughn – Gertrude is bad ass. Seriously, there is no other word to describe her. She and her friends, children of evil villains, vow to do good by their parents’ wrongs. Gertrude’s powers involve being mentally connected with a velociraptor. Like I said, bad ass.
5. Marcelo from Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork – Who wouldn’t want to be friends with Marcelo?
6. Miranda from When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead – I loved Miranda, flaws and all. I would have loved to have a best friend just like her when I was her age. I did a really awful job reviewing this book when I read it, so please just go out and read it. But make sure you read A Wrinkle in Time first.
7. Skim from Skim by Mariko Tamaki – I really appreciate it when I find an overweight girl in a YA novel that I can relate to. I was bullied for my size in elementary and middle school and Skim is under the same pressure. I wish I’d had a friend like Skim.
8. Enzo from The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein – Does a dog count? I think so. I loved this book, everything about it, but especially Enzo. What I wouldn’t give for a dog like Enzo!
9. Ella from Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine – I read Ella Enchanted so often when I was younger, I felt like Ella was a friend of mine. Full of spunk that she doesn’t even know she has, Ella is a perfect role model. The movie version of this book is an atrocity (even though I love Anne Hathaway).
10. Meg and Charles Wallace from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – This is probably the book that shaped me as a reader more than any other. I already feel like I know Meg and Charles Wallace better than I know some in real life friends, so I thought they would be a perfect ending to this list.