[.ca] Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy (ISBN 0064462188)

From Amazon.com:
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 teens, notably the Newbery-award winning Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse, and Robert Cormier's boyhood memoir, Frenchtown Summer. Teen readers may even be so inspired as to try their own hand at this challenging but satisfying form. (Ages 10 and older) --Patty Campbell

This book is a great book....I'm not pretending:
What happens when your big sister goes crazy and ends up in a mental institution? What happens when all your friends ditch you because they think you're crazy too? That is what this story is about. Cookie's sister, who she has always looked up to, is diagnosed with a mental illness. All Cookie's friends ditch her, because they think she might be crazy too. While having problems with friends, the once close family is now suffering. When they try to spend time with their older sister she ends up having a fit. This book sheds light on the fact that if someone you know, or someone in your family is diagnosed with mental illness, it hurts you too. Stop Pretending is a true life story. The author Sonya Sones went through this in her life, and this book is a collection of her poems. I would recommend this book to older kids and adults that are interested in mental diseases.

Out of the blue:
This book is about a 12 year old girl who goes through nothing imaginable. She has a sister who is about 16 and "out of the blue" she goes crazy. This book is written in all poems. It is mostly about the 12 year old girl dealing with the fact that her sister is crazy. She is trying not to let anyone know, butsomehow they find out and she has no friends. The first 2/3 of the book is really sad but it is touching. In the last third of the book she gets a boy friend and things start to turn around. I can't tell you if her sister gets better, but everyone is happy in the end.

she gets it exactly right:
My mom developed schizophrenia suddenly the summer I was 18 and my little sister was 7. It was so difficult, but we all kept going, more or less. And then, many years later, I started reading this on the subway. Big mistake. Sones gets all the thoughts, emotions, guilty feelings, and things you wonder about exactly right, and that book reached out and grabbed me by the throat. There I was, bawling on public transport, but I could not stop reading. It was like she dipped into my head and smeared my own feelings right onto the page. If anyone has ever wondered what it's like to have a family member go crazy, the answer is right here. She's got it exactly right, and keeps it from getting overly dramatized by writing it in spare, raw verse that leaves those nerves exposed. That was several years ago, and I have never forgotten the power of this book for me.

GREAT BOOK!:
Wonderful story! What could be more tragic than a teenage girl who has lost her friends, her sister, and all hope? Just like that. Cookies sister went crazy. Not being able to think, Cookie is drowning in confusion. Her family is falling apart and everything goes down hill from there. This is an AWESOME story! You have to read it.

GREAT BOOK!:
Wonderful story! What could be more tragic than a teenage girl who has lost her friends, her sister, and all hope? Just like that. Cookies sister went crazy. Not being able to think, Cookie is drowning in confusion. Her family is falling apart and everything goes down hill from there. This is an AWESOME story! You have to read it.