Eleven year old Aurora Petrequin has a best friend, Frenchie Livermore, but it’s Aurora who does all of the talking for the pair. Because of his autism, Frenchie doesn’t speak, but he communicates with Aurora with his eyes, his attention, his tweets, and other nonverbal cues. Aurora, on the other hand, is almost Frenchie’s opposite: active, loud, and impulsive. And while Frenchie loves birds, Aurora is a rock hound.

Frenchie and Aurora both find it difficult to make friends with other people, but as Aurora begins to develop friendships with other girls her age, will Frenchie get left behind? Not if Aurora can help it. Until one day Aurora does forget about Frenchie for just a minute, and Frenchie disappears. As the story progresses, the whole town turns out to help find Frenchie, a child that not many of them noticed much before he turned up missing.

Author Leslie Connor has written some vivid and memorable characters in Aurora and Frenchie. I feel as if she met her goal stated in the Author’s Note: “I was determined to get these characters right.” Aurora, with her loud voice and her habit of interrupting and blurting out her thoughts, makes the reader just the least bit uncomfortable, at least this reader. And that little bit of discomfort made me realize that loud, hyperactive children can come across as rude or out of control when they are really trying to be their best selves. Frenchie, on the other hand, because he is nonverbal, truly does seem to “disappear” from the narrative at times, only to pop up with an insight (the author shares Frenchie’s thoughts from time to time) or an action that shows him to be a person with as much to share as anyone else in this world.

I felt this book was a good one to put on the “diversity list.” It doesn’t try too hard, doesn’t make anyone a villain, and all is well in the end. Frenchie and Aurora are good examples of the diversity of gifts and abilities that are present in all of our children–and adults. And the adults in the story are present and good and all trying to help find Frenchie. Even without a villain in the story, the tension that makes a good drama is there: has anybody seen Frenchie?