Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Sones

Sones, Sonya. Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. New York: Harper Collins Publishers,1999.

ISBN 9780060283872.

Author, Sonya Sones takes a look at her sister’s mental illness through the eyes of the people left behind. Using fictional characters, Sone's first novel tells a touching story of a family dealing with a very personal, troubling issue.

While on Christmas Break, Cookie's big sister has a mental breakdown and is put in a mental ward. Cookie begins writing in a journal to deal with her thoughts on her sister and the affects it is having on her and her family/friend relationships. Cookie writes,

When I was lost

you were the one who found me

now you're the one who's lost

and I can't find you anywhere."

In addition to dealing with her sister’s illness, Cookie also describes normal adolescent problems. She deals with the anxiety of her friends finding out about her sisters mental state and them abandoning her. She worries that she might become mentally ill as well, and the emotions that develop as she begins a dating relationship with a boy.

Sones novel is written as a diary in verse. Each poem stands by itself with its own title. The novel reads like pages of a journal or diary the teen has kept about the ups and downs of the lives her sister's mental illness has affected. The author’s notes at the end of the book give authenticity to the story. After sharing a poem about visiting her sister in the hospital, Sones was encouraged to share even more of her poems because "Poems like this would be helpful to anyone who has a family member with a problem that's throwing the rest of the family off-kilter".

For a class lesson in formal and informal letter writing begin with this verse from the novel.

Apologies

I’m sorry

I borrowed your favorite sweater

Without asking

And then I got that ink stain on it

That wouldn’t ever come out.

I’m sorry

I lied about it afterwards,

when you asked me

if I knew how it got there

and I swore I had no idea.

And I lied about your goldfish, too.

He didn’t die a mysterious death like I said,

that week when you were away

on that Girl Scout trip.

I forgot to feed him.

The passage concludes

I’m sorry for

every

single

terrible

thing.

Have students think about a time when they were sorry about something. Using their previous lesson over formal and informal writing, have students write a letter or poem of apology for practice. Plan for some contrived apology reasons if students state they have nothing to apologize for.

If students have a hard time developing their thoughts for letter writing I will also share a few selected pieces from This Is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness by Joyce Sidman. This title often sparks students' creative thinking and at the end of the assignment, are often asking me to read “just one more.”