Will You Be My Friend? by Sam McBratney
Published 2020 · 32 pages · 8,800 words · about 1 hour at an average pace · Children's Literature
How hard is Will You Be My Friend? to read?
Will You Be My Friend? scores 80 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 80 out of 100
- This 32-page picture book for young children uses simple everyday words, in the register of Judy Blume's young adult prose but easier still. Read-aloud rhythm and repetition keep every word within a small child's reach.
- Sentence structure: 80 out of 100
- Sentences are short and direct, built for reading aloud at about 8,800 words' worth of picture-book pacing or less. The grammar is simpler than the diary syntax of Anne Frank.
- Abstraction: 12 out of 100
- Little Nutbrown Hare's wish for a playmate is a concrete situation: a small hare, a busy parent and other hares met while exploring. The idea of friendship stays at the level of a child's own experience, much like the plain adventure of Asterix the Gaul.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- A handful of events and few characters fill a 32-page book, with pictures doing much of the work. It is lighter than the diary reflections of Anne Frank.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- The story states what Little Nutbrown Hare wants and shows what happens. The only inference asked of the child is that not every hare he meets is real, which the pictures make clear.
- Symbolic density: 100 out of 100
- Hares stand in for parent and child in the Nutbrown Hare series, and the search for a friend is the whole theme. Nothing here asks for symbolic reading beyond that.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- The voice is sincere and warm, like the adolescent voice of Judy Blume. The playful ending stays earnest.
- Resolution withholding: 80 out of 100
- Little Nutbrown Hare sets out to find a real friend, and a fun ending answers that quest; one reader found it abrupt. As in the genre-expected endings of Beach Read, the story closes.
- Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
- A linear quest: Little Nutbrown Hare wants to play, goes exploring and meets other hares. It is simpler than the diary form of Anne Frank, with no timeline shifts or competing narrators.
How Will You Be My Friend? is regarded
Will You Be My Friend? holds a literary regard score of 21 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.