Sones, Sonya. Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 1999. ISBN 0060283866
AWARDS:
Christopher Award for best children's book
Claudia Lewis Award for Poetry
Myra Cohn Livingston Poetry Award
Reading Association Young Adults' Choice for 2001
Favorite Book of 1999 by Teenreads.com
American Library Association 2000 Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
American Library Association 2000 Best Book for Young Adults
American Library Association 2002 Popular Paperback for Young Adults
International Reading Association Young Adults' Choice for 2001
SUMMARY: On Christmas Eve, the author’s sister has a nervous breakdown. She is put into a mental hospital. The author, as well as her mother and father, have no idea how to deal with the sister’s breakdown or how to communicate with each other.
Visiting her sister is torture. She wants to keep the whole situation a secret because she is afraid her friends will abandon her if they find out. She finally tells them and they spread the news around the school and shut her out of their social circle. She finds a girl with family problems like her, and they become friends. She also meets a boy. She finally introduces him to her family, including her sister. He doesn’t seem to mind that her family isn’t perfect.
Her sister begins to recover and the rest of the family begins to heal while she is away. In the end, she finds she doesn’t miss her old friends at all and she has a boyfriend that she loves.
CRITICAL ANALYIS: The story is told through the eyes of a teenage girl whose sister has a mental breakdown on Christmas Eve. The story is believable and the way the little sister has to deal with the situation is dead on. She doesn’t get attention from her parents because they are so worried about her big sister. She has to deal with the whole situation herself. She loses her friends and her sister’s situation takes over her whole life. I think many students can relate to the little sister and what she goes through. Almost every family has to deal with family members that suffer from some physical or mental problem.
The characters are all well developed and we see them in memories of the time before the sister’s breakdown, as well as how they deal with this new ordeal.
The novel in verse makes this book an easy read for any teenager. Most teenagers can relate to the feelings and thoughts of the younger sister. I liked that the display and visual of the verses changes frequently which adds to the visual appeal of the book.
The author also includes that this really happened to her sister when she was a teenager. She also lists resources for students if they need help. I thought that was a great addition to the book. Students need resources to reach for in case they see themselves in this story.
REVIEWS:
School Library Journal Review:
“ Grade 6-9-An unpretentious, accessible book that could provide entry points for a discussion about mental illness-its stigma, its realities, and its affect on family members. Based on the journals Sones wrote at the age of 13 when her 19-year-old sister was hospitalized due to manic depression, the simply crafted but deeply felt poems reflect her thoughts, fears, hopes, and dreams during that troubling time. In one poem, the narrator fears that "If I stay/any longer/than an hour,/ I'll see that my eyes/have turned into her eyes,/my lips/have turned into her lips, ." She dreads having her friends learn of her sister's illness. "If I told them that my sister's nuts,/they might act sympathetic,/but behind my back/would everyone laugh?" and wonders what she could have done to prevent the breakdown. All of the emotions and feelings are here, the tightness in the teen's chest when thinking about her sibling in the hospital, her grocery list of adjectives for mental illness, and the honest truth in the collection's smallest poem, "I don't want to see you./I dread it./There./I've said it." An insightful author's note and brief list of organizations are included.”
Kirkus Review:
“In a story based on real events, and told in poems, Sones explores what happened and how she reacted when her adored older sister suddenly began screaming and hearing voices in her head, and was ultimately hospitalized. Individually, the poems appear simple and unremarkable, snapshot portraits of two sisters, a family, unfaithful friends, and a sweet first love. Collected, they take on life and movement, the individual frames of a movie that in the unspooling become animated, telling a compelling tale and presenting a painful passage through young adolescence. The form, a story-in-poems, fits the story remarkably well, spotlighting the musings of the 13-year-old narrator, and pinpointing the emotions powerfully. She copes with friends who snub her, worries that she, too, will go mad, and watches her sister's slow recovery. To a budding genre that includes Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust (1997) and Virginia Euwer Wolff's Make Lemonade (1993), this book is a welcome addition. (Poetry. 10-14)”
RESOURCES:
Sones, Sonya. Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 1999.
Sonya Sones website.
Simon and Schuster/Sonya Sones website.
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