Sign Up Here: A Story About Friendship Written by Kathryn Cole Illustrated by Qin Leng Publish date April 5, 2016 Published by Second Story Press

Summary: It seems like every kid in Dee-Dee’s class has joined a club but her. It’s not that she doesn’t want to join a club. It’s that no one will let her! Because of her disability, she doesn’t walk fast enough for the Walking Club and the Strong-Arm Wrestling Club became the All-Boys Strong-Arm Wrestling club when she beat Joseph easy-peasy in a match. Dee-Dee knows that friends shouldn’t leave you out and that she is a very good friend. So she and her teacher come up with a plan to show what good friends are and how they should treat each other.

Review: This book was great for my son and me. My son is 8 years old and followed along with the words nice and smoothly. I loved that there were different ethnic backgrounds for the children in the book, displaying diversity, just as in a child’s real classroom and school. Kathryn Cole does a marvelous job of showing children through her book that not including other children just isn’t the right thing to do. My son said, “Dee-Dee was right along. If you make others feel left out, you might hurt their feelings and then you would have to come up with something so you can be friends again.”

Also, The Pictures were great at describing the story to the children who might not follow along with the words. I really liked that Cole used the teacher as a support system to the main character in the book. Children should be reminded that they can always go to their teachers if they feel left out or need help with something. A great read for my son and I both! I received this ebook from Netgalley and Second Story Press in exchange for my honest review.

This is a great book about seeing the person and not the disability. Being left out is something everyone has had to deal with at one time or another. But too often it happens all the time to those with a disability. Your friends might not even realize what they are doing. I like hoe she thought about what to do and did something proactive to take care of what was going on.