Two girls form an unlikely friendship during their shared time in the school nurse’s office in this heartfelt middle grade novel for fans of Save Me a Seat and Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus . Meg spends her days hoping no one thinks too hard about why she wears the same t-shirt and slippers to school every day. Luckily, the nurse’s office provides a welcome escape from classmates who don’t understand…and snacks when food runs out at home. Riley knows fitting in at her new school would be a lot easier if her friends were more understanding of her type 1 diabetes. So she keeps her testing under wraps…and an emergency bag of jelly beans on hand. When Meg and Riley end up together in the nurse’s office one day, both girls think they’ve worked each other out, but what if they’ve got it all wrong? On the brink of moving on to junior high, Riley and Meg must find the courage to discover who they really want to be. And maybe a bag of shared jelly beans will provide all the help they need. "An emotionally honest portrayal that is empowering to those seen as different." -- Kirkus Reviews "It All Begins with Jelly Beans is a sweet and heartfelt friendship story that reminds us to be kind." ― Christina Collins, author of After Zero Nova Weetman lives in Melbourne with her partner and two children. She has written for film and TV, including the children’s series Backyard Science , H2O , and Pixel Pinkie . Nova is also the author of several children’s books, including middle grade books in the Choose Your Own Ever After series; young adult novel Everything Is Changed ; and the middle grade novels It All Begins with Jelly Beans and The Secrets We Keep , which received several accolades including being shortlisted for the Readings Children’s Book Prize. For more information and reviews, visit her at NovaWeetman.com.au. Chapter 1: Meg Chapter 1 MEG MY CURRENT BEST FRIEND IS a brown paper bag that has a slight crease in the corner. I take it everywhere. This particular bag has been with me for about two months now, although it’s getting ratty along the edges, so it won’t hold my air for much longer. I stash my old bags in a drawer in my room because I can’t bring myself to throw them out. After I hide the old one, I go hunting for a plain, recycled, thick paper bag that will withstand the force of my lungs blowing into it. Bags like that are harder to find than you might think. Mushroom bags are good, or bags that have held fancy loaves of bread. I tried naming my bags at the beginning, but it felt a bit sad, so now they’re just the Bag. I didn’t always have the Bag for a friend. I used to have a real best friend. Her name was Eleanora. I was so impressed that someone with such a sophisticated name was my friend, I’d say her full name as often as I could. She had four syllables. I only have one. Meg. Actually, that’s not true. It’s Margaret, which I like even less than Meg. It’s as dull as my mousy brown hair. Eleanora isn’t around anymore. That makes it sound like she’s dead. She’s not. She just ditched me and made friends with other girls who don’t carry paper bags in their pockets, leaving me here, in the nurse’s office, with mine. The nurse’s office is a fluoro-lit room down the corridor from the principal’s office, where the Bag and I sometimes spend part of the school day. At first my teachers tried to coax me back to their classrooms, although now they’ve accepted that I hang out here on occasion. Actually, if I were to fill in a questionnaire about how frequently I was in here, I’d probably lean toward the “Often” category. I like those questionnaires. I’ve filled in a few in the past year or so. There’s something reassuring about seeing parts of your life broken down into a series of black marks in little boxes. It makes life feel more manageable. The office lady, Sarah, who starts the day with red lipstick on her lips and ends the day with it smeared on her teeth, even sneaks me some leftover snacks from the staff room. It might be a piece of banana bread or a couple of cookies. The food makes me feel like I’m now one of the nurse’s office’s permanent residents, as regular as Dash Jones, the kid with asthma. The nurse’s office is about the size of a child’s bedroom. There’s a single bed that nobody ever wants to lie on because it’s hard to imagine the sheets are changed very often, and what if the kid who used it before you had stomach issues and vomited on the pillows? And there are a pair of armchairs that are too brightly covered in red-and-yellow patterned vinyl like they’ve been stolen from the children’s hospital, where the furniture is all primary colored to lift the mood of the patients. The only wall decoration is a poster of a Healthy Eating Pyramid that is torn in one corner, and there’s a straw basket of picture books left there for kindergarteners to read when they are having a bad day. When they built Bayview East Elementary School, they should have con