The Appeal of Friendships in Middle-Grade Fiction

The untimely and tragic passing of Friends sitcom star Matthew Perry got me thinking about middle-grade friendships. During the years of the sitcom’s popularity, my then middle-grade age son would rush to finish his homework so as not to miss the latest episode. As we all know, wanting to belong and being part of the ‘latest thing’ is very important to middle-graders.   

TThe untimely and tragic passing of Friends sitcom star Matthew Perry got me thinking about middle-grade friendships. During the years of the sitcom’s popularity, my then middle-grade age son would rush to finish his homework so as not to miss the latest episode. As we all know, wanting to belong and being part of the ‘latest thing’ is very important to middle-graders.   The theme of friendship is also central to many of my favorite middle-grade novels, and I tried to give it a big place in my 2022 debut novel, Eddie & the Vegetarian Vampire.

Consider the trio of Harry, Ron, and Hermione in the Harry Potter series. It’s hard to think of one without thinking of the others. In the case of the parent-less Harry, he has been completely stripped of the support and shelter we traditionally associate with families. Understandably, he never gets over this loss which we, the reader, experience so acutely through his eyes. Ron and Hermione, his friends of choice, become his family. In many ways, they help Harry to succeed. Without their encouragement when times are tough, would Harry have risen to the challenges he faces?

One has only to observe children in a playground seeking each other out to understand the human impulse for bonding. We search for others with interests similar to our own. What interests bind the friendship of the central Potter characters? Although they have supportive families, Ron and Hermione are outcasts as well. Ron’s family is poor and eccentric.  Hermione is the child of non-magical parents or ‘muggles.’ All of us feel like an outsider at some point in our lives and so it is easy to identify with these characters and to see what they share in common. But Harry is drawn to Ron and Hermione for more than reasons of mutual isolation. He feels their strength as well – their bravery, their loyalty to each other, and their vulnerability.

In a similar vein, in Newberry Medal winning author Katherine Applegate’s 2018 middle-grade fantasy series, Endling, the protagonist Byx is a kind of talking dog whose family has been killed by humans. She fears she may be the last of her kind. She is the last best chance to save her kind, but only if she teams up and learns to trust members of other intelligent species -- including humans.

The graphic novels of Brian Selznick also provide a lesson in friendship. Set mostly in a train station in 1930s Paris, The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007), features a young boy named Hugo who overcomes his abandonment by building a relationship with a cranky shop-keeper in the station and his spirited, independent-minded goddaughter, Isabelle.

By way of contrast, the character of Snape in the Harry Potter series shows what a friendless life can look like. Snape is a tragic hero. He is never able to win the love of the person he admires and wants to be with the most, namely, Lilly (Harry’s future mother). He spends much of his adult life pretending to be someone he is not, cold, alone and unyielding. Granted, he undertakes this pretense for a higher and noble purpose, namely to infiltrate Voldemort’s inner circle and destroy the evil wizard who is responsible for the death of Lilly. But Snape experiences little joy along the way.

I tried to imitate these themes in my 2022 Eddie and the Vegetarian Vampire novel. Twelve-year old Eddie has spent most of his life in an orphanage. He would like nothing more than to be re-united with the mother who abandoned him as an infant. With the help of the kindly vegetarian vampire Count Bloodless, he tracks down his mother, only to realize the problems that led her to abandon him in the first place are still very much present. In the end, it is only the support of his best friend and the nun who dotes on him that allow him to look forward to a brighter day.

Perhaps this is the ultimate message that friendships, whether in real life or in literature, convey: They are a powerful aide for people struggling to beat the odds to be successful.