Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy - Softcover

Sones, Sonya

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0064462188 ISBN 13: 9780064462181

Publisher: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2016

Synopsis

Continuously in print for nearly two decades, this groundbreaking and profoundly moving story told in verse, from award-winning author Sonya Sones, has been repackaged with a striking new cover and bonus content.

When her beloved older sister is hospitalized after a sudden mental breakdown, Cookie is left behind to cope with a family torn apart by grief, friends who shun her, and her fear that she, too, might one day lose her mind.

Based on award-winning author Sonya Sones's own true story, this novel explores the chilling landscape of mental illness, revealing glimmers of beauty and of hope along the way. Told in a succession of short and powerful poems, it takes us deep into the cyclone of the narrator's emotions: despair, anger, guilt, resentment, and ultimately, acceptance.

About this title

Review:

The subtitle of Stop Pretending says it all: "What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy". In a sequence of short, intense poems based on the author's own experiences, a 13-year-old girl suffers through her shifting feelings about her sibling's mental illness. She recalls the terror of the Christmas Eve when Sister was suddenly transformed into a stranger; the horror of visiting Sister in the hospital and finding her rocking on all fours; the fear that her friends will find out; her own worry that she, too, may lose her mind; and her wistful memories of Sister as she was before. More complex emotions are also explored, such as her irrational suspicion that Sister may be deliberately acting crazy, as poignantly expressed in the title poem: "Stop pretending. / Right this minute. / Don't you tell me / you don't know me./ Stop this crazy act/ and show me / that you haven't changed. / Stop pretending / you're deranged." Gradually, as Sister begins to recover, the girl is able to find hope and again take pleasure in her own life. Blank verse is perfect for a story with such heightened emotion, and is a format that has been used with great success in other fine novels for teenagers, notably the Newbery-award winning Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse, and Robert Cormier's boyhood memoir, Frenchtown Summer. (Ages 10 and older) --Patty Campbell

Review:

"Stop Pretending is a tour de force debut. It celebrates truth-telling, and has a purity and passion that speaks to the heart."--Boston Globe

"The poems take on life and movement, the individual frames of a movie that in the unspooling become animated, telling a compelling tale."--Kirkus Reviews

"Unpretentious. Accessible. Deeply felt."--School Library Journal

"Sensitively written."--The Horn Book

"The poems have a cumulative emotional power."--ALA Booklist (starred review)

"Heartfelt."--KLIATT (starred review)

"This debut novel shows the capacity of poetry to record the personal and translate it into the universal."--Chicago Tribune

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Children's Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0064462188
• ISBN 13: 9780064462181
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176