Anybody Here Seen Frenchie?
by Leslie Connor
Intermediate, Middle School    Tegen/HarperCollins    336 pp.    g
2/22    978-1-5344-8079-7    $16.99
e-book ed.  978-0-06-299938-2    $9.99

When eleven-year-old Frenchie Livernois, who is nonvocal and neuroatypical, goes missing in the Maine woods, Aurora Petrequin blames herself. Frenchie has been her best (and only) friend since third grade; now in sixth grade, Aurora (who has sensory and behavioral differences herself — “All my ideas were the loud kind. Hard to keep inside”) still takes seriously her self-appointed responsibility to look out for him. In this nuanced novel, Connor gives readers an authentic friendship between two neurodivergent kids, each of whom has a deep appreciation of the natural world. Through Aurora, we see Frenchie’s humanity; in turn, Aurora’s patience, perceptiveness, and empathy shine — traits that few of her peers bother to notice. While the bulk of the narrative centers on the painstaking and nerve-wracking search for Frenchie, Connor weaves experiences from the friends’ recent past into the present drama, adding complexity to the story and characters. Aurora’s assured first-person voice is funny, heartwarming, and keenly observant (“My hair is doing that thing where it flattens onto my face. Clinging. Like scared hair”). Intermittent chapters are narrated in the third person from the perspective of a few key characters, which heightens the tension and moves the finely crafted plot forward to a well-earned happy resolution.

From the January/February 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.