Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Sones

Bibliography

Sones, Sonya, and Alison Donalty. Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.

ISBN 0060283874

Plot Summary

          Told through the eyes of a 13-year-old, Stop Pretending: What happened when my big sister went crazy by Sonya Sones is a verse novel about the journey Cookie experiences as she copes with her sister’s mental breakdown.  From the first poem that portrays her family as an intimate “whole” to the very next, when the whole is shattered into “wondering what these three people were doing in my house,” the reader joins the author in a real-life experience which forms the basis of this novel.    Cookie takes the reader with her as she lyrically expresses her inner fears and rationalizations, her coping mechanisms, and her desire to put her family back together.

Critical Analysis

          Using her own experience with a mentally-ill sister as its cause, Sylvia Sones writes Stop Pretending, a verse novel tracing her emotional reactions to the effects her sister’s illness had on her life and that of her parents.

          Stop Pretending is all about the message and the use of words and line length to convey feeling and mood.  Sones writes about a mental break that lasts from Christmas Eve to Memorial Day.  In a space of these five months, her life, her sister’s life, and her parent’s lives are sliced into 106 small word pictures.  Each slice is titled and contains a situation, a reaction, an emotion, or a realization revolving around a sister’s manic-depression and the havoc it causes a family.  Using repetition of key words as an organizing principle is one of the techniques Sones uses as she writes.  For example, “Sister’s Room” repeats “How can she. . .” about her sister’s living conditions.  “Shock” repeats the words “Will they . . .” to show how upset Cookie is to think her sister might be abused in the hospital.  There are times that the slice is simply one sentence broken in pieces, a technique which could be said to symbolize her sister’s condition of being broken also.  “Thin Skin” is a slice in which Cookie expresses her fear that her sister’s condition will be obvious to her friends.  “Sometimes/I worry that/the truth will break out all/over my face, like a fresh crop/of zits.”  Sones is having the reader become as anxious as Cookie with this simile.  Some slices end with a word per line for the last three or so lines, emphasizing the words by their solitary use and all the empty space which follows them.  For example, in “How I Know When It’s Time to Leave,” the last three lines are “just/like/hers.”

          Sonya Sones has written a verse novel which makes a serious emotional impact.  The reader participates in her shock, anguish, fear, depression, and loneliness.  Through the conversion of her real life journal into her novel, Sones manages to raise awareness of a social issue on a personal level.

Review Excerpt(s)

Christopher Award for best children’s book

Claudia Lewis Award for Poetry

Myra Cohn Livingston Poetry Award

Gradiva Award for Best Poetry Book

Berliner Kinder Prize in Germany

Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies 2001, National Council of Social Studies

Favorite Book of 1999 by Teenreads.com

New York Public Library 2000 Book For the Teen Age

International Reading Association Young Adults' Choice for 2001

American Library Association 2000 Best Book for Young Adults

American Library Association 2002 Popular Paperback for Young Adults

American Library Association 2000 Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers

“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.” – KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Unpretentious. Accessible. Deeply felt.”- SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

“Sensitively written.”- THE HORN BOOK

“The poems have a cumulative emotional power.” - ALA BOOKLIST

Connections

·        Do an advice column.  Have students submit a situation, real or imaginary, serious or amusing, and ask for advice.  Pass each letters around for students to write their advice until it returns to the student who submitted the situation.

·        The teacher chooses a sad situation from current events.  She tells the students about it or has the students read the article.  She asks them to write an encouraging letter to someone involved.

Red Sings from Treetops by Joyce Sidman

Bibliography

Sidman, Joyce. Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors. Ill. by Pamela Zagarenski. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2009.

ISBN 9780547014944

Plot Summary

          Red Sings from Treetops by Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski makes nature’s colors come alive in descriptive language and images.  Tracing the year through the changing color palette of the seasons, Sidman has a lady with a pup, both of whom wear crowns and ever-changing clothing and colors, participate in different seasonal activities. She portrays colors without naming the image which draws the reader/listener into the illustrations to discover just what the color is in that season.  For example, “Yellow and Purple hold hands./  They beam at each other/ with bright velvet faces.”  There are pansies at the bottom of the page.  All five senses are in play at the season slip one into the next leaving the reader wondering how the book will end.

Critical Analysis

          As a poetry book, Joyce Sidman’s Red Sings from Treetops uses the cycle of nature’s seasons as a canvas on which to paint with words about the colors that symbolize each season.  The organization of this individual poet compilation is necessarily linear, and the lady figure leads the reader from one season to the next.  There is an intrinsic appeal to the audience because of the familiarity with seasonal changes and colors.

          Just as the seasons progress in bursts of colors, the poetry flashes figurative language and sound effects.  “Red darts, jags,/ hovers.”  “White sounds like storms.”  Blue is “a glimmering dark/ that slowly/ turns/ light.” “Green trills from trees” is a combination of alliteration and personification.  Sidman makes the most use of personification as every color has its verb to accomplish in its season.  “Gray and Brown/ hold hands” in the winter.  “Snap! Moth for supper” and “Red: crisp, juicy crunch!” are examples of sound Sidman includes for her colors. 

          It is the imagery which catches the reader by its everyday presence portrayed by an imaginary focus.  “White clinks in drinks” means ice cubes yet it is a color but not really and it makes noise.  “Yellow grows wheels/ and lumbers/ down the block” is a bus.  The color names appear in that color and are always highlighted.  This imagery serves to not only emphasize the color, but also creates a visual that teaches and corresponds to the colors on the page.  Finally, there is the little red bird on many of the pages which symbolizes the forward movement of the season and whose song notes begin the new year’s spring.

Review Excerpt(s)

Winner of Bank Street Claudia Lewis Award

Winner of the 2007 Cybils Award

A Lee Bennett Hopkins Honor Book

A School library Journal Best Book

New York Public Library’s 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing

Texas Bluebonnet Master List

A Booklinks Lasting Connection

2010 Caldecott Honor Book

2010 ALA Notable Children’s Books, Younger Readers

Booklist: The Best of Editor’s Choice 2009

Bulletin Blue Ribbons 2009, Nonfiction

2009 Horn Book Fanfare List

“This is an important book both for its creativity and for its wisdom.” – SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

Connections

·        Students draw a color from a box of 3x5 cards, a verb from another box of 3x5 cards, and a noun from another.  They can exchange with someone if they like.  They then write a poem about their card choices.

·        Students dress for outside.  From a pile of face down 5x7 cardboards with paper glued on them for writing and a pencil attached to them with string, each student draws one cardboard, turns it over, and reads the color written at the top of the page.  Out they go for a short walk to write down what they see in that color.  Back in class, they listen to Red Sings from Treetops and use their observations to try writing personification.