Stop Pretending

http://www.amazon.com/Stop-Pretending-Happened-Sister-Crazy/dp/0064462188

Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy

Poet: Sonya Sones

Publishing: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999

            Cookie is a thirteen year old girl who comes from an ideal New England middle class upbringing growing up in one of the communities that dot around the Boston metro area. Her family, normal and seemingly picture perfect, is about to celebrate the Christmas holiday when Cookie’s 19 year old sister has a manic-depressive episode. From an introduction that sets a pace of idyllic familial undertones, readers are quickly jolted as Cookie describes the horror she feels as she witnesses her sister, near naked, running out the door during the frigid Christmas season. Such a ruckus is stirred by Cookie’s sister’s rage that the once calm and collected family, doing everything in their capacity to control her, begins to lose their grip. Based on the real life experiences and derived from the personal adolescent journals of Sonya Sones, Stop Pretending… recounts Sones thirteen year old self in poetic verse as she stands witness to how her sister’s illness and subsequent inpatient stay at a psych ward challenges her own view of the normal family dynamic. Each page takes on an emotional confrontation of how Cookie deals with her sister’s mental health both as an observer and as a victim of her own insecurities that commonly plague adolescents when any thirteen year old tries to figure out how deal with the abnormalities that arise in a once normal household.

           The prose style poetry in Stop Pretending… is written as memoir veiled as adolescent journal entries providing glimpses into the mind of a thirteen year old. At first reading, the poems read as short sporadic bursts of emotion that are at times sentimental, cruel, loving, and confusing. The confrontations faced by the narrator, Cookie, are conveyed by judgment sometimes real and sometimes imagined. Sones’ brilliance in capturing her thirteen year old self is really capturing one of the biggest fears any young teenager would face, judgment from others. A reoccurring theme in many of the poems is the fear of judgment from others and how that placement of judgment will reflect on Cookie and her family during their time of crisis. The fear of Cookie’s peers and neighbors finding out about her sister’s mental illness is evident early on with the poems “Questions” and “Thin Skin.” In the poetic sketch “Questions” Sones recalls how her thirteen year old self would dodge the uncomfortable questions about her sister’s illness with a simplified statement of “she’s sick.” “Thin Skin” compares the truth of her sister being revealed as crazy or committed to a psych ward with outbreak of zits all over her face- apparent and noticeable. With the underlining fear of judgment, Cookies sister’s mental illness, or the big family secret, is also the shame of the family and illustrates a cruel widely held belief of adolescence; one rotten apple spoils the bunch. Focusing on her insecurities of what others may think, Cookie begins to place that judgment on her sister. The poem “Sister’s Room” shows a change of direction of how Cookie views her own sister. Though there are poems peppered throughout the pages that take on a sentimental and rosier picture of how Cookie once looked up to her sister, it is with in “Sister’s Room” that Cookie takes a critical view of her sister by judging her through other peoples eyes:

“How can she bear people looking at her

whenever they feel like it

through that square of chicken-wired glass

in her door?”

           The same criticism feared by Cookie is then placed on her sister by Cookie herself to the point of almost blaming her sister. But even with those cruel critiques of her sister, Cookie remains sentimental, and through her criticisms is the underlining wish that everything would return to normal. 

            This poetry book can be used in the classroom to introduce students to powerfully honest and emotional poetry. Students can be challenged to write their own poetry about their family, about questions of identity, and poems about personal emotional states. Pre-teens and teens will relate to this deeply personal endeavor.

             Stop Pretending has been nominated for numerous awards including the Bluegrass Award (2001), Maine Student Book Award (2001), Evergreen Young Adult Book Award (2002), Beehive Young Adults' Book Award (2002), Garden State Teen Book Award (2002), and Volunteer State Book Award (2004) and won the Christopher Book Awards (2000).

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