Sewing a Friendship 2

by Natalie Tinti

Children's book review by Steve Barancik

Ages 9-12

Second book from 10 year old Natalie Tinti

Natalie Tinti is a writer's writer. Never mind that the author of Sewing a Friendship 2 is 10 years old.

In fact, she's matured as a writer since her first book (also reviewed on this site) - which she wrote when she was a younger ten!

As a fiction writer myself, I'm rather in awe of this young talent. Her stories are well structured, her characters complex, and her prose completely uninhibited by staid, adult convention:

As Nina turned the next page with gratefulness and excitement to see what would be on it, she was so full of thrill that she even forgot about her scratched up finger.

An adult writer likely would have felt compelled to rewrite that sentence a hundred times over, and it would have gotten worse each time!

And let me tell you something about that "scratched up finger": it's the trauma that sets the whole story into motion!

Now it's easy to be dramatic about unrequited love, or a bomb going off in the public square, but it takes a real author to spin a tale worth telling that hinges on a scratched up finger. Natalie Tinti does just that, and for 180 pages no less!

There is no end to this young lady's storytelling sophistication. Each of the five distinct young characters in this book spins a story within a story, and Natalie ties all five together. And the world she depicts is a world I (a 48 year old man) wouldn't mind living in!

It's a sweet, hopeful, energetic and safe world. The girls have a Babushka, a secret agent dog, and Mr. Windy-Whisper (the wind) not only looking out for them but hanging on their every world. It's a world in which every obstacle can be overcome with mutual support and joint creativity. Or, as Natalie says, it's about

The Power of...Imagination, Friendship, & Mind!"

Sewing a Friendship 2 features the five main characters from the first book, plus a new one...a boy. They have names like Sokron Blossom, and each has a fictional alter ego (I told you this was sophisticated storytelling!). Sokron's is Sokora.

Have I mentioned that Natalie Tinti is also her own illustrator?

I was blown away by the art in her first book, and again in this second one, but I'm a writer, not an artist. For expert opinion, I called in two teen fans of Japanese Anime. (Anime is an art form Natalie is clearly influenced by.)

I started off by asking how old they thought the artist was. They agreed she was probably a female in her twenties, though one opined that the artist could just as easily be an older man. (Anime characters can sometimes be a little too - shall we say - curvy. Natalie's characters, on the other hand, just look like very imaginatively dressed ten year olds.)

When I told the 16 year old and the 17 year old that the artist was only ten, the book was very nearly torn in half as they fought to see who would be first to examine it more closely! They were able to tell me about all of Natalie's Anime influences, but were quite emphatic that the end product was very much unique and her own.

Sewing a Friendship 2 works on a number of levels, perhaps the most important being inspirational.

It's inspirational to see that a 10 year old is capable of such stunning creativity, and your children will likely take inspiration from that.

And the story itself is all about creativity. When Natalie Tinti's characters try to decide what to do next, there's a veritable blizzard of ideas put forth, and the girls have to sift through them all to come up with a plan of action.

So if you have kids at home (girls in particular will like this book) who have been known to stare blankly at a screen while proclaiming, indignantly, that there's nothing else to do, you couldn't do any better than to turn off the electronica and present them with their own personal copy of both Sewing a Friendship books.

"You're bored? Well, what would Sokron Blossom do?"

Webmaster's note: Sewing a Friendship 2 will be published on November 1, 2010. I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy. The first book is available now.

Both books are available from Natalie's website.

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