My Best Friend and Other Enemies

What happens when best friends become worst enemies? 11-year-old Jessica loves drawing cartoons and hanging out with her best friend Natalie, making dinosaur cookies and having sleepovers. But when new girl Amelia turns up at school, everything changes. Suddenly it seems like Amelia and Natalie are best friends, and Jessica is out in the cold, with Amelia doing everything in her power to make Jessica feel left out.

Things turn from bad to worse when Amelia and Natalie form a secret club and deliberately exclude Jessica. Determined not to let them get one over on her, Jessica immediately recruits an ill-assorted group of girls to form a gang of her own - the ACE club. But it's Jessica's knack for drawing and sense of humour - not to mention an unlikely friendship with one of the school's toughest girls - that ultimately prove to be her secret weapons in her fight to stop Amelia's bullying for good.

Written in a warm and chatty style, the first children's book from comedian Catherine Wilkins will be hugely appealing to girls dealing with the ups and downs of pre-teen friendship. Exuberant Jessica is a likeable heroine with a lively sense of humour, whilst the snooty Amelia makes a brilliantly unpleasant 'mean girl'. But although there are plenty of laughs to be had, Wilkins also treats the subject of making friends (and enemies) with sensitivity, wisdom and understanding in this readable and entertaining story.