Our Friendship Rules

CLASSROOM GUIDE

Moonbeam Children’s Book Award, Gold

Mom’s Choice Award

In OUR FRIENDSHIP RULES, by Peggy Moss and Dee Dee Tardif, readers learn it’s pretty easy to join the cool crowd… All you have to do is ditch your best friend first… Alexandra and Jenny have been best friends for a long time. But when Alexandra is momentarily dazzled by the glamour of a new girl at school, she’s willing to do almost anything to get to be the cool girl’s friend. Ultimately, she tells her best friend Jenny’s biggest, most important secret and just like that, Alexandra is in. And Jenny is out.
“Peopled with a multi-ethnic cast of vividly illustrated characters, this charming book will appeal to its intended audience of girls in elementary and middle school. Geis’s pictures are beautiful and a perfect complement to the text, which Moss wrote in collaboration with a Toronto teenager.” - Ruth Becker, Multicultural Review

“A strong narrative text and collage illustrations grace this tale. Two girls are fast friends until the arrival of Rolinda Sparks rocks the relationship. The narrator’s betrayal of her friend and re-establishment of her own integrity is fine reading and provides good material for thoughtful discussion.” - Yellow Brick Road

“We all make mistakes. We become better people when we learn from them. I love this story because Peggy Moss and Dee Dee Tardif reject one-dimensional mean girls. Instead they offer us a real girl who does something she regrets, who recognizes the sadness, loss, and hurt she inflicts, and who is granted a great gift the joy of knowing a friend’s forgiveness. This should be a lesson to usall.” - Lyn Mikel Brown, co-author of Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes, author of Girlfighting: and Betrayal and Rejection Among Girls
Peggy Moss is a writer, educator, former hate-crime prosecutor, and the author of Say Something and One of Us. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband John and their two daughters.

Dee Dee Tardif is a writer, card player, and hide-and-seek champion. She also lives in Toronto.

AlissaImre Geis started drawing when she was two. Her imagination fueled by all the books that she read, she drew her way through school filling up the margins of her notebooks with sketches. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, she has illustrated several books for children including Winnie at Her Best and Neil’s Castle, which was her first venture into writing. She is currently living in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts with her husband and son, who faithfully wear all the hats and scarves she knits for them.