STOP PRETENDING:WHAT HAPPENED WHEN MY BIG SISTER WENT CRAZY

1. Bibliography

Sones, Sonya. 1999. STOP PRETENDING:WHAT HAPPENED WHEN MY BIG SISTER WENT CRAZY. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0060283874

2. Plot Summary

This book, Sonya Sones' first published work, is a collection of poems, although commonly referred to as a verse novel, that explains the emotional turmoil endured by the narrator after her older sister has a nervous breakdown and is committed to a mental hospital. The book begins with the sister's breakdown and travels through the narrator's feelings of guilt, embarrassment, anger, fear, grief, and eventual acceptance of her sister's illness. Although the story is fictionalized, it is based on the author's own experience with a big sister who was diagnosed as manic depressive, or bipolar, as the disease is now called.

3. Critical Analysis

This collection of free verse poetry runs the gamut of human emotions. Essentially, Sones covers the seven stages of grief (disbelief, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, depression, and acceptance) as her main character, Cookie, loses her sister, not to death but to mental illness. Just as the stages of grief progress and change over time, so too do the poems within the book. The tone of the beginning poems is dark and full of despair. For example, in "Three A.M. That Same Night" Cookie says, "I'm huddled on my bed,/ rocking in my quilt,/ wishing I could fall asleep/ and end this nightmare" (Sones, 1999). Clearly Cookie is having a great deal of difficulty dealing with her sister's sudden breakdown. Also, the poems at the beginning of the book have shorter lines and more spaces creating a fast paced, almost frantic feeling that mimics Cookie's emotions at the time.

This frantic feel and dark tone at the beginning, however, is a stark contrast to the longer lines, slower pace, and hopeful tone of the ending poems. In "Tonight", Cookie says, "And tonight,/ for once,/ it feels okay/ just to be three" (Sones, 1999). Obviously, by the change on tone and structure of these poems, we know that Cookie has found some measure of peace.

The intense emotions found within these pages will fascinate young readers who will be better able to relate to Cookie's inability to understand her own emotions. However, the content of the poems as well as the free verse form in which they are written make this book better suited for older adolescent readers rather than beginning readers. On a personal note, I greatly enjoyed reading this book both for its challenging content and its creative style.

4. Review Excerpts

School Library Journal: 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. The simply crafted but deeply felt poems reflect her thoughts, fears, hopes, and dreams during that troubling time.

Booklist: Based on Sones' own family experience, this debut novel shows the capacity of poetry to record the personal and translate it into the universal.

Kirkus Reviews: 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.

Connections:

* Other books by Sonya Sones
WHAT MY MOTHER DOESN'T KNOW
NECESSARY NOISE: STORIES ABOUT OUR FAMILIES AS THEY REALLY ARE
ONE OF THOSE HIDEOUS BOOKS WHERE THE MOTHER DIES

* Other authors who write about Illness and Loss
Lurlene McDaniel
Adele Griffin
Jordan Sonnenblick
Donna Jo Napoli