I have got a 7-year-old boy, he is very sensitive extremely loyal and good friend but he seems to be struggling with his relationships especially with his best friends – as he is never chosen best friend – is there any book you could recommend about children and their relationship with other children, mainly boys? I don't think my advice is always particularly helpful as I think we girls think slightly different – and my experience was always a happy one at that age anyway. He loves books so I'm hoping maybe a book will be able to help him.

Friendship can be so very painful! Rather than just looking for stories about friendships between boys I would extend your search and read stories about friendships of all kinds.

Michael Morpurgo is especially good not only on the importance and qualities of friendships between children but also on how loving and being trusted by an animal can help a child to blossom and feel happy. He is particularly good on human friendships in Cool!, a dramatic short book about a boy whose friends help him to recovery after an accident. And on the value of powerful relationship with an animal in The Butterfly Lion, the story of a boy's friendship with a magical white lion which supports him through deep unhappiness and transforms his life.

For a book to read aloud, Michelle Paver's Wolf Brother and sequels, a gripping series about the relationship between an orphaned boy and a young dog which saves the lives of both of them as they struggle for survival in an inhospitable place is also inspiring about the mutual strength a human/ animal relationship.

For a more direct look at a character who, like your son, wants good friends Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid could be ideal. Greg Heffley, the wimpy kid of the title, longs to be more popular. In his diary he records the misery of the being friendless and the ridiculous things he does to try to make himself more popular. What Greg doesn't realise is that he actually has a very good friend. Rowley. But the Wimpy kid dismisses Rowley as unimportant because he isn't cool! Rowley is smart enough to be himself at all times and not feel that he has to play particular roles to please others. It's a situation that many will recognise. The enormous global success of the Wimpy Kid titles implies that there are many boys like Greg and your son; the idea that everyone else has more friends than you is probably universal and more a perception than a reality.

Boys who make friends easily feature in Jacqueline Wilson's brilliant Cliffhanger and its equally fabulous sequel Buried Alive!. At the heart of the stories lies the wonderful friendship that is forged between weedy Tim and Biscuits who, as his name implies has a passion for eating them, when they met on an activity holiday. On the face of it the two have little in common but they become firm friends when Biscuits helps Tim to stand up to the nasty, bullying Giles.

A little old for your son just now but something he will enjoy later is Michelle Magorian's Goodnight Mister Tom which features a very wonderful friendship between eight year old evacuee Willie Beech and Zak who already lives in the village. The two boys are very unlike one another and yet they become the closest of friends who sustain each other in difficult times.

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