A Good Friend: The Superpowers of Friendship

By Mira Mallius Merja Kalm

Each of us can possess the superpowers of friendship, which help us be good and considerate friends to others and be there for them and cheer our friends on.

This is a vibrant handbook of touching stories, activities, and dilemmas, demonstrating that each of us has the superpower of being a good friend. It shows how the reader can be trust-worthy, considerate, tolerant, and kind, encouraging children to practice these qualities through character-strengths-based pedagogy.

This title, developed by educator and writer Merja Kalm and illustrated by Mira Mallius, is a great non-fiction book for both individual readers to go through, as well as for classrooms to go through together. A Good Friend is a companion piece to the duo’s first book, The Handbook of Superpowers for Cool Kids. These compelling books see a person’s virtues as superpowers which should be brought up and actively developed for a kinder world.

Publishing information

About the author

Mira Mallius is an illustrator and a designer, with a background in fashion. She has illustrated several children’s books, and she is known for her charming animal print stationary.

Merja Kalm is a teacher, an expert on pedagogy and an author of text books and non-fiction. She wishes to make the world a better place by writing. The Handbook of Superpowers for Cool Kids (2020) is the author’s first non-fiction book for children. This insightful, pedagogical and visually fun title was followed by the equally compelling book A Good Friend – The Superpowers of Friendship (2021).Through her work and exprience as a teacher, Kalm has put together touching guidebooks with which readers learn how to practice their best, most sympathetic qualities. With this work, the author emphasizes and spreads the idea of a kinder world, whether the reader is an individual, or a classroom full of students. “Compliment, thank, encourage, and love them. These five words are the cornerstones of my teaching philosophy. The school environment for me is, at best, a place of genuine encounter, interaction and doing things together.”– Merja Kalm for educational publisher Sanoma Pro