Shortlisted for the 1996 Carnegie Medal, Secret Friends is a heartbreaking story about friendship and the effects of bullying from the multi-award-winning Elizabeth Laird - now reissued with new illustrations by Alleanna Harris. Rafaella doesn't find it easy to make friends. She looks and feels different from the others at school. And Lucy is the first to tease, the first to call her 'Earwig', until they get to know one another and Lucy sees that Rafaella is full of hopes and ideas, just like she is. Lucy loves keeping her own secret friend, until tragedy strikes and secrets can't be kept any longer.Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Children's Book Award and reissued with new illustrations, more than twenty years after first publication, Elizabeth Laird's moving and unflinching novella brings home the crucial importance of cultivating empathy in young people."[A] humane and honest story. It conveys so much, so simply and so well.

" - Scotsman "[A] fine weepy with a moral, about the dangers of playground cliquishness and cruelty." - The Sunday Times.