STOP PRETENDING by Sonya Sones

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Sones, Sonya. Stop Pretending: What happened when my big sister went crazy. (1999). New York: Harper Collins. ISBN 9780060283865.

In the verse novel Stop Pretending, author Sonya Sones has captured a deeply powerful, poignant, and personal story. This young adult book written in a simple, straightforward style takes readers on a complex emotional roller coaster ride based on the true life of the author. Sones' poetry reflects the mind of a young girl and what her family is facing from the fallout of the elder sister’s mental illness and hospitalization.

While neither rhyming nor rhythmic, each poem in the book realistically reflects the natural language and expressions of a teenage girl. The feelings conveyed at different moments are raw and palpable. The words spoken by the young narrator, Cookie, are intensely profound in their heartbreaking tenderness. Each small page of short lines, written as if glancing inside her private journal, is a lesson in brevity. The author’s blunt writing leaves no question of the pain, frustration, and helplessness of the situation. Every poem recounts the sad abnormality in otherwise normal everyday life events. In the poem ”Mass Pike”, Sones writes: “On the way home from the hospital / my father starts crying so hard/ that he has to pull over/ by the side of the road,/ and we weep with him/ while cars filled/ with happy families/ whiz past.” The book closes with an author’s note and list of organizations, rounding out what School Library Journal hails as, “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.”

Stop Pretending was awarded in 2000 by ALA as a Best Book for Young Adults and Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers.

This verse novel can be shared with teens as a prompt to inspire realistic journal writing or possibly even fictional diary writing.  

Books in Print. TWU Library. Accessed October 8, 2013 http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2125