A Better Best Friend by Olivier Tallec

Title: A Better Best Friend

Author: Olivier Tallec

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Gecko Press

Published: 1^st May 2024

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 32

Price: $7.99

Synopsis: A feel-good picture book about best friendship told with dry comedy and an open ending—squirrel and mushroom are best friends until another best friend (a fly) comes to play.

“This morning when I was out walking, I found a best friend. At least I think so. It certainly looks a lot like it! He really has a best friend kind of face.”

In this comedic picture book exploring a forever childhood question about friendship, squirrel and a mushroom explore the forest through the seasons, show each other special trees, build snow mushrooms, share the good times and bad—which become good bad times alongside a friend.

Then spring arrives, and so does a new friend. And then another. This raises a profound question for an overthinking squirrel: should we have just one best friend?

After much drama, Squirrel doesn’t find an answer—the friends keep coming—and he ends the book with at least three better best friends.

~*~

Squirrel lives in a forest – and he wants a friend. Soon enough, he meets Mushroom, and they become friends. As they explore the forest through the seasons – until Squirrel meets Moo – a fly – in the spring – and wants to be Moo’s friend as well. But you can only have one best friend, right? Join Squirrel and his friends as they explore what friendship means, what it means to have many friends, and about sharing good and bad times.

Olivier Tallec’s translated picture book is perfect for young children starting to come to terms with friendships, changes in friendships and what it means when somebody new comes along who needs to be included. Using animals and a mushroom, in a setting where the seasons change beautifully – showing each other special trees, building snow mushrooms, and exploring their world, much like young children do. Squirrel is convinced he can only have one best friend – that one person who will always be there. He thinks he has to stop being Mushroom’s best friend to become Moo’s best friend.

However, this picture book shows children that they can have as many friends as they want – that they don’t need to stop being a friend to someone because somebody else comes along, and also teaches them about sticking by your friends through the good times and the bad times. Because it is our friends who can help us. Olivier has written and illustrated this book, and whilst it has a distinctly European flavour, by using animals and scenes that will be familiar to people, it captures a sense of universality – the idea of friendship and some of the challenges that might be faced in friendship groups.

This is a beautifully gentle book celebrating friendship, childhood, wonder and whimsy, as well as imagination and the ways we can learn to deal with what life throws at us every day, however old we are.