I think one of the problems with a lot of these Newbery Troubled Child books is that the desire to help someone in trouble is too much the impetus of the friendship. It's not really a friendship if one of the so-called friends is acting mostly on account of feeling sorry for the other, you know?

Brooks wrote What Hearts almost ten years after The Moves Make the Man, which only makes the contrast between the two books more baffling. It must have been an intentional shift in direction, but I don't quite see why he would make that choice.