When Friendship Followed Me Home

by Paul Griffin

"If you have middle schoolers who are too young to fully grasp  John Green’s  The Fault in Our Stars  and love dogs, give them this sweet tearjerker." —  School Library Journal

"In this beguiling tearjerker, a foster kid's luck slowly changes after he befriends a scruffy pup he finds outside the library."-- People magazine

Ben Coffin has never been one for making friends. As a former foster kid, he knows people can up and leave without so much as a goodbye. Ben prefers to spend his time with the characters in his favorite sci-fi books…until he rescues an abandoned mutt from the alley next-door to the Coney Island Library. Scruffy little Flip leads Ben to befriend a fellow book-lover named Halley—yes, like the comet—a girl unlike anyone he has ever met. Ben begins thinking of her as “Rainbow Girl” because of her crazy-colored clothes and her laugh, pure magic, the kind that makes you smile away the stormiest day.  Rainbow Girl convinces Ben to write a novel with her.  But as their story unfolds Ben’s life begins to unravel, and Ben must discover for himself the truth about friendship and the meaning of home.

Genres: Middle Grade, Realistic Fiction, Friendship, Young Adult, Fiction, Animals, Dogs

272 pages, Paperback

First published June 7, 2016

About the author

Paul Griffin lives, writes, and trains dogs in New York City. His previous novel, The Orange Houses, was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults Top Ten, an International Reading Association 2010 Notable Book for a Global Society, a Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best Book of 2009, and an Amelia Bloomer Project Award winner.