In a typical picture book about hurt feelings, the feelings belong to the child at the story's center. In Plus One, John Hare's wry and unpredictable inversion, it's Agnes, from whose perspective the story is told, who's doing the hurting. Fortunately, she has a young neighbor who manages to challenge her values while ultimately making her (and readers) smile.
Agnes has just moved to town and needs friends. At school she hands certain girls invitations to a "fancy tea party" she's hosting. A boy intercepts an invitation and shows up at Agnes's house: "Hi. My name is Dave. I live next door, and I'm here for the tea party." Agnes turns him away: "The invitation says plus one.... And since you don't have a friend with you--goodbye." So Dave returns with a goose. Agnes rejects the goose for being "too loud." On it goes until Dave finally gives up. But when none of the girls Agnes invited show up, she's forced to rethink her selectivity.
Plus One is a funny but charged story about the wrongheadedness of exclusion, and while there's a message here about the folly of discounting someone because of gender, Hare (Field Trip to the Moon) is too graceful a writer to spell it out. And his art ensures that Agnes's cruelty never becomes unbearable: he works in a sunny palette and inserts plenty of visual gags, starting with the tie that Dave adds to his sleeveless T-shirt, shorts, and boots to approximate fancy-party attire. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author