In a box of books donated to my Little Free Library, I found and read You Have a Girlfriend, Alfie Atkins? by Gunilla Bergstrom, which was published back in 1988. I hope it was a young boy who owned this book, and his parent or grandparent donated it, for the “lesson” that Alfie, the protagonist learns is one young boys everywhere should learn. Friendships with girls are not “unmanly” and something to be avoided at all costs, but certain girls like Milly, Alfie’s friend are “not exactly a girl.” When the other boys tease Alfie for playing with Milly, and even write “Alfie loves Milly ” on the bathroom wall for the whole school to read, these same boys end up envious of Alfie and Milly’s tree fort which has many ingenious features and inventions thought up by Milly.
My favorite parts are the pages with the illustrations of how girls are, and how Milly is NOT like a girl, and then the page where Alfie lists how Milly IS like a boy:
” Milly almost never cries./ She invents things./ Right now she is making a mailbox, with a rope pulley for the fort./ (Milly never tells anyone about the fort. She knows how to keep a secret.)/ Everyone says that Milly is a REDHEAD./ Alfie doesn’t think so. / Her hair isn’t red; it sparkles like gold–at least when the sun is shining./ And she even wears a heart of gold around her neck!/ Milly is a good friend because she knows…
How to make candy and bake cakes…and build a toy circus…and do a handstand on one hand. She’s not afraid of jumping off the garage roof, and she can make really disgusting faces. Look!
Now she is working on a bell for the mailbox. It will ring when you pick up the mail. You can find out things from Milly. You can learn things from her.”
These quoted passages are included in five of the most wonderfully illustrated pages of Alfie and Milly’s adventures (and “things that girls, in general, do” and “the boys” Alfie is friends with), but I could not find the illustrator’s name anywhere! I must assume that he/she is an illustrator with R&S Books. The book is originally a Swedish book and is distributed in the US by FArrar, Straus and Giroux, N.Y and in the UK by Ragged Bears, Andover; in Canada by General Publishing, Toronto; and in Australia by ERA Publications, Adelaide.
It is a book every boy should read!
powerfulwomenreaders 
Hmmm, this is one that I am not familiar with at all. I will have to go look at it on Amazon or Goodreads to see the cover, it might bring back memories.
LikeLike