Ask a kid to write a paragraph about their summer and you get two sentences and a shrug. Ask the same kid which animal their best friend would be, and you cannot get them to stop.
Why the Old Version Stopped Working
Classic friendship books asked for a favorite color and a phone number, which made sense when phone numbers were the whole point. Kids today do not need to record a phone number anywhere. What they respond to is a prompt that feels like a game rather than paperwork.
The Part Parents Miss
An animal-themed keepsake book tends to survive far longer than people expect, mostly because it gets used hard: passed around at sleepovers, stuffed in backpacks, left open on bedroom floors. The ones that last a decade are the ones printed and bound to actually take that kind of handling, not the stapled photocopies teachers used to hand out.
Keeping It Simple
The theme does the heavy lifting. Pick something the kid actually cares about, make sure the physical object can survive a school year, and let them fill it in with their own friends without much adult interference.