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Okay, full disclosure. This is NOT a children's book. But if you have kids, or you work with kids, or you used to be a kid, I highly recommend this book. Maybe not everyone will love it as much as I did, but whatever. I'll just read it again for you.
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend is, in a word, brilliant. It's one of my favourite books of the year and that's saying something because I have read a truly insane number of books this year. I'm sure there are lots of you out there who have read far more than I have, but I've gone from an average of 1-2 books a week in 2011 to about 3-4 a week so far in 2012, so for me that's a lot. And this one stands out as phenomenal.
The premise is simple but powerful. The novel is told entirely from the first person perspective of Budo, the imaginary friend of an Autistic boy named Max. Well, he's not labelled as Autistic, but the author makes it clear. In Budo's world, imaginary friends are very real and can interact with each other, even if the only humans who can see them are the children who first imagined them. And once that child stops believing in his or her imaginary friend, the friend disappears. Since Max spends so much time inside his own head, his imaginary friend has survived longer than most. Budo is nearly six years old and in that time he has learned a lot about the world and the dangers it presents, both for Max and for him. Budo is worried about disappearing, worried about what will happen if Max stops believing in him. But more than that, he's worried about Max. Max sometimes forgets to look for cars before crossing the street. Max is being bullied by a mean kid at school. And, most worrisome of all, Max has been befriended by a teacher whom Budo does not trust. At all.
